Black and White Photography - A 1935 Invention!

[Mike Farley]

In the latest issue of Amateur Photography out today, Michael Freeman has written a thoughtful article about black and white photography which I can recommend. He opens with the startling observation that monochrome photography was invented in 1935, his logic being that until the invention of Kodachrome that year, there was no practical alternative to shooting in anything other than black and white. True, James Clerk Maxwell produced the first colour photograph in 1861 and there were earlier processes such as Autochrome around, but these tended to be cumbersome and limited in use. It was only when Kodachrome became available did photographers have a choice about omitting colour from their images.