Herman Leonard

Kenny Clarke, New York, 1948

Herman Leonard‘s portrait of Kenny Clarke, the jazz drummer, is stunning piece of black and white photography. Leonard was a famous jazz photographer. He covered this high-contrasted photograph by deep black tone, and just illuminated the necessary parts of the figure and instrument. The backlight glints shoulder and head of Kenny Clarke, and make a division between black parts of body and background. The perfect light on drumsticks shows complete volume of the sticks. Direction of light and lower level of camera against the face, shows the drummer characteristic during the gig.

The white pocket handkerchief is one of the few parts of the image with the soft tone. The rest of image contains harsh tones of black and white, even the curves of drums, cymbals and figure.

Smoke in the background of the photograph plays an important role to illustrate the atmosphere of old school type of jazz bars. Reflect of light on the edge of snare is glowing, and its visual effect is look like the source of light to illuminate face of drummer.

In general, this photograph is a great example of usage of light in creating the positive and negative spaces in photography.

Edward Weston

Pepper No. 30 (1930), Edward Weston

Pepper No.30 is probably the most famous green pepper of the planet, which had a chance to be still life model of Edward Weston in 1930. This photograph is one of the pepper collection photos he took in 1930. The photograph depicts high-density black and white tones.

This photograph took in highly figurative composition, and looks like a person holds his head by his muscular arms. Perfect curves of subject illuminated by above source of light.

Shadows have equal importance as the highlight areas. Twisty lines of subject are drawn on all parts of the pepper, and tied on the top.There is no straight or angular line in this piece of work.

Circular texture of the backdrop in front of the photograph push the line of sight toward the subject, where the subject lets your eyes to move and discover the whole volume of the green pepper in black and whit photograph.

Gilbert Garcin

L’avenir n’est plus ce qu’il était, Gilbert Garcin, 2006

Gilbert Garcin is a French photographer who started his photography career at the age of 65. He places himself in his photographs while dressed in a dark-old overcoat. His photo shots usually illustrate inextricable situations in comical, surrealistic compositions, and all in black and white. “The future was not what it was” is the name of this photograph, and Garcin placed himself twice in the photograph. His first figure is pushing a huge wool ball and the other one is looking at little ones, it seemed melted.

This black and white photograph contains white horizontal parallel stripes on the half button of black background. Direction of to figures are toward out of the frame, and Garcin balanced the different visual weight of the balls by movement and inactivity of himself in photograph. Rhythm, repetition, and movement are the main visual elements of his works, also in this one.

Perplexity is one of the core messages of the Garcin’s photographs. He proposes unsolvable riddles in his unique photographic style, and leave the viewers without any answer.