Michael Young: On Emotional Connection

What makes black and white photography so important to you?

I think I’ve always loved black-and-white photography. I believe it started when I was a kid, especially with old movies. I fell in love with the contrast between the two shades. What makes black and white so important to me is that it adds a timelessness and a starkness to an image that color just can’t interpret. I love the way light, patterns and textures relate to my subject when color is removed.

What inspires you to create photographs?

My inspiration simply comes from life I see lived out all around me, moments in time that can be captured or created through photography. I especially find inspiration in light, shadow, shapes and forms. These are factors which play heavily into what I’ll convert to black-and-white. I usually see this before I even take the exposure.

Why is black and white photography so important to our future in the art world?

I think black and white is still a very important part of art because we all live and operate in a world full of color, and while color can be very beautiful, the absence of it makes for an entirely different perspective. When you remove color from an image you sometime remove a distracting element and you are left with something so raw, so different, so dramatic.

Black and white photography creates an emotional connection between the viewer and the subject. In my opinion, there would be no future in art without Black and white photography.