Does grainy black and white make photos look old?
In discussion over the new exhibition of Rhodri Jones’ China photographs at the Side Gallery, some of the visitors from Cleveland CAD were questioning whether the high grain in the photographs automatically makes them look um, timeless, and if it does, is its use in some way a commentary on today’s China and the way its industrialisation connects with say, the documentary photography of the north-east’s mining traditions?
In a highly saturated world, is black and white always a signifier of the culturally traditional in photography, or does it merely strip away a lot of extraneous information? I simply don’t know, but was good topic, and the pictures are interesting. China is more frequently represented in full colour, so perhaps stripping it away leads the eye more to the detail in the pieces, the shapes. My favourites were the slag heap photographs, the horror of another Aberfan-in-waiting, and those showing the roofs weighted down with bricks against the wind, just as the allotment shed roofs are held down all along the Durham coastal villages.
And yes, any skyscraper block might well have been built within the past 100 years. The coexistence of high rise capitalism and street level poverty might be cliches here, but they work as social commentary in the China context. China, the supplier of all cheap goods, Primark tops at £1.99, is simultaneously the big new bogeyman of industrial pollution. The new red black country.
So what does high grain monochrome have to say?
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