Originally Posted by
copake_ham
Basically, it really comes down to the fact that all film photographers are Luddites.
However, that distiction is not fine enough. So within this grouping there are the uber-Luddites and the neo-Luddites. The former group solely uses monochrome photograhy because until around the mid-1930's the entire world was monochrome.
You might find this to be hard to believe, but if you look at the historical record. there are no true color images prior to the development of Kodachrome.
With the development of Kodachrome - people suddenly realized that there was really color in the world - we know this because it could now be documented on film!
This was a startling discovery because people understood that film images were ultimate determinant of reality. If it couldn't be captured on film - it didn't exist. So the world was definitely monochrome until Kodachrome proved it could be viewed otherwise!
If you do a careful study, you will find that the world remained in B&W through the Great Depression, the rise of Fascism and the onset of the Second World War. But contemporaneously, the early discoveries that there really was color in the world was slowly seeping into human conciousness.
Certainly by the end of World War II most of the world had become colorful! This is proven by the fact that many more color photographs began to appear - thus documenting the "coloring" of the world.
Consonant with this discovery of color - certain photographers, the neo-Luddites began to use film to record this changed "colorized" world. Obvioulsy, since it is mankind's plight to become tribal, these neo-Luddites found themselves at odds with the uber-Luddites who reject the concept of color and believe it is an illusion and not reality.
This rift within the film photography world continues to this day.
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