I am attempting to answer this question as you have asked me to. Maybe not you specifically, but the readers of a recent article I wrote (link below) who contacted me and asked me to address this issue. It’s not one that has ever concerned me, but it seems to concern others. I don’t question the medium only the photograph and when doing so I hopefully don’t come with preconceived prejudices. However, let’s start to respond to the title of this article and try and suggest a simple answer. To do that let’s go back in time and close to the beginning. At an early meeting of the Photographic Society of London, established in 1853, one of the members complained that the new technique (photography) was “too literal to compete with works of art” because it was unable to “elevate the imagination”. The idea and problem for some of photography as only a mechanical recording medium was there at the start and has never fully died away. Let us not forget that its initial medium was black and white. Painting was in colour.

It is this very issue that stands at the base of why black and white photography is today considered to be more serious, more important and more artistic because those photographers at the beginning needed it to be to be considered so to be ‘art’. They needed their photography to be valued as a stand alone art form that could compete with the colour palette of the brush. In a world of rapid mechanisation they needed to retain artistic merit for work created with and by a machine. The best early photographers were masters of monochrome tonality. The print was their canvas, the negative their starting point. Don’t forget that when in 1844-6 Fox Talbot published his thoughts about photography he gave the book (the first publication to contain photographic illustrations) the title The Pencil of Nature. Not the brush, but still a tool of the artist.

Colour photography only became practical, cheap and widely available in the mid-1950s. In a time of re-birth after the dark black and white days of war. The masses embraced it, but the serious photographers assumed the role that the defenders of painting had before them and refused to embrace the new technology. Colour photography was a documentation of holidays, birthdays, and family events. It was the vehicle by which consumerism was spread and therefore an anathema to the true artist who honed their black and white craft with the large format camera, the rangefinder and in the hallowed environ of the darkroom surrounded by foul smelling chemicals. The idea of dropping-off film at the local chemist to receive a carboard envelope of prints a week later, only devalued the artistic medium they so prized. “Colour negates all of photography’s three-dimensional values”, proclaimed Cartier-Bresson. God had spoken. In 1959, Walter Evans was similarly dismissive when he said that, “There are four simple words for the matter, which must be whispered: Colour photography is vulgar.” Surely these greats of photography were correct?

Well, those that followed them didn’t all agree and made a stance with their work and their opinions. Eggleston made an obvious statement, but one that was considered as being balsphemous by some, “The world is in colour. And there’s nothing we can do about it.” Saul Leiter was more direct, “Photographers looked down on colour or felt it was superficial or shallow.” A stance still adopted by many today.

The world in the past was not black and white it was just recorded that way as it was the only option. The result is the sense of a sepia past. A past of greys, blacks, grain and shadow figures that moved during long exposures. A pictorialist approach to history. Not an accurate representation of reality. From the second word war onwards life became Kodachrome and Ektachrome bright with saturated colours and it remained so until the high-dynamic-range, ultra-crisp-capture and hyper-real-contrast of the digital camera. A reality as fake as the romantic daguerreotype, just at the other end of the visual spectrum. Times change but the photograph is still informed by technology.

To consider black and white as being more serious or artistic as a photographic medium today is to align yourself with the Victorian photographers desperate to be taken seriously as artists. With Victorian attitudes to art and technology. To feel that it is the only way in which to capture light effectively, with sophistication, insight and understanding. Perhaps you would also like to bring back the workhouse, remove the right for women to vote or travel by horse? Your call!

The truth is of course that black and white and colour photography are equal. They are equal photographic mediums. There is no lesser or greater. No less or more serious. No less or more artistic. No less or more difficult to master. They are both available to us now and they both have their place in the photo book, the museum or the gallery space. The choice is yours, just make sure you don’t base your choice on outdated opinions and beliefs from a past century or two. Unless of course that’s what you want to do!

Further Reading
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2026/01/03/the-colour-versus-black-and-white-debate-it-doesnt-matter/
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2022/12/09/bill-jay-archive-myths-and-legends-from-photographys-shady-past/

Image: This picture appeared in the Illustrated London News and was taken at Richard Beard’s studio at the Royal Polytechnic Institution at 309 Regent Street, London, which showed Jabez Hogg taking a likeness of Mr William S. Johnson in 1843.

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020) and Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, (Orphans Publishing 2024). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

© Grant Scott 2026