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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty Two: Black and white travel photography – making less into more > Chicken Seller, Morning Market, Vientiane, Laos, 2005
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25-JAN-2005

Chicken Seller, Morning Market, Vientiane, Laos, 2005

This lady had the biggest selection of chickens in the market. She impassively swept a small mop from side to side -- keeping the flies away. The greatest strength of this image is its incongruity, at least to a Western viewer. To those of us not used to seeing a table full of dead chickens with feet up in the air being serenaded by lady with a feather duster,
this image might come as a shock to the senses.

You can see the color version of this image in a travel article I posted on my Laos trip at:
http://www.worldisround.com/articles/139137/photo61.html . It is an excellent travel picture. It’s an exotic image that conveys a sense of place very well in terms of its reality. Its colors are part of that reality. The yellow chickens, her pink duster (and matching pink shirt), and the many colors of a busy market behind her, all work to give the viewer a good sense of this chaotic Laotian market scene.

Now abstract all of that by converting it to black and white. The yellow color that gave these chickens their immediate identity vanishes and they chickens essentially become creatures. The colors of the marketplace behind this lady no longer compete for our attention. We become fixated on those dead birds that ask us a big question – what is going on here? We must study it a bit more closely to find out. And that is what abstraction does so well. It asks questions and demands answers of the viewer. This becomes a more personal image in black and white, more challenging to the imagination, and considerably more incongruous as well.

Whether or not we convert this image from color to black and white is not a matter of right or wrong, good or bad. It depends upon how we want to use the picture and what we want to say to our viewers. I feel this shot worked very well in color in my travel article on worldisround.com. But if I wanted to make my viewers think, wonder, and feel – black and white would be my choice here.

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Phil Douglis30-Sep-2005 15:57
I agree. In making the chickens into a mass of stuff down there, they become all the more unreal. Which was my intention.
Guest 30-Sep-2005 14:16
It's interesting. Again which version (color or bw) is better depends on what you want ot convey. When I see BW, I immediately focused on the woman, she is more prominent in the BW photo. When I see the color, my eyes immediately go to the chickens, whose golden hues attract my attention. In the BW, the chickens become a solid color, leaving the woman the central attention.
Phil Douglis09-Aug-2005 03:09
Thanks, Kal, for coming to the support of my black and white chicken lady. As you can see, Ruthie takes another view on this one. So I jokingly referred to this shot in connection with Ruthie's brilliant "At the Amulet Market athttp://www.pbase.com/ruthemily/image/47367877 , where she has it both ways by using, within the same image, black and white to represent the everyday world, and color to symbolize a spiritual world. If had the photoshop skills that Ruthie has, I would have tried that here -- isolating her in color, and keeping everything else in black and white. Now THAT would be surreal!!!!
Kal Khogali09-Aug-2005 01:24
Great image Phil and beautifully layered. I agree with you on the impact of the B&W. But then again I am probably biased in my choice. I believe the layers would not have worked as well in colour. The abstraction at once creates fantasy (the surrealism of the composition), but also removes the distraction of the background and allows us to concentrate on the incongruity. This is one of the reasons I have grown to like B&W much more than colour, becasue I believe I can control meaning so much more, by removing or reducing the impact of what is not relevant to the image. I have an image on a similar theme that I never posted from my trip through southern China. You have inspired me to post it, and I will do so tonight for your comment.Travel photography per se is an expressive image of reality and therefore colour adds to that reality, here you offer us surrealism, someting totally different.
Phil Douglis07-May-2005 00:23
I think our different takes on this image are a matter of intention, Ruth. You want this image to be amusing, and in color, it certainly is. I want it to be surreal, and this black and white version is, in my view, more surreal because it is less real, more abstract, and thus leaves more room for the imagination to work. I agree with you that incongruity can often be based on humor, and the color image is definitely more amusing. I love the color image, too. It's a bit easier to read, and more fun to view and think about. This image reflects a different kind of incongruity, however. It makes the chickens more ambiguous, even frightening, because their identity is blurred. As I said in my caption, I thought it made the viewer think, wonder and feel to a greater degree than the color version did.

We are not really in disagreement, Ruth. You are simply expressing your preference for the color image, a picture that I thought made an excellent travel photo. I feel that this black and white image expresses an entirely different meaning, becoming more challenging to the imagination as a result. It all comes down to our intentions as photographers. It's refreshing to hear your reasons for preferring the color version. You obviously have different intentions in mind than I did. And that is why I posted this image here. To make that point.
ruthemily06-May-2005 20:32
i am going to join forces with Monique here and say that i think the colour version is far more incongruous. maybe it's a female thing!
the colour image almost makes me smile, as i can work out what the lady is doing. smiling usually means something incongruous, right? jokes are based on incongruities. i giggled at your comment about us westerners not being used to seeing dead chickens serenaded with a feather duster -- i think the colour version emphasises that point more.
also, i think the colour version makes the idea of the dead chickens more incongruous. they look so colourful, indeed almost as colourful as their market surroundings. there is evidently no contrast between life and death here. when you remove the colour from the image, of course all the image is still in the same (now grey) tones, but we lose the idea that the chickens were the same colours. they look like they are reaching up to the woman with their legs/'hands' yet she is staring at something different, oblivious to how life-like they appear. i find it distrurbing to see their heads, neatly tucked under their bodies. i guess that is a challenge to my normality, where signs that the meat i eat was once a living creature is mostly removed by the time i pick up the meat in a supermarket.
i wouldn't go as far as to say this image doesn't work in monochrome, but i definitely think you have lost a lot more than just colour in the conversion, and haven't gained substantially more.
Phil Douglis01-Mar-2005 04:46
Bruce and I outvote you, Mo, two to one! Actually, it's a matter of what are trying to say. The color shot was a great travel picture. It registers instantly. The black and white version is a shock to the eyes. Bizarre and incongruous without the color. Of course, your context makes a big difference, too. Your travels and your upbringing makes you see a table full of dead chickens in quite a different way than most of us do. But you are still outvoted!
monique jansen28-Feb-2005 18:52
I don't agree, I think the color image spoke more volumes than this one - but that might be because its incongruity is less for me since I have travelled in many non western countries myself - and grew up in a small village where we slaughered our own chickens. I know the supermarkets do not make them, so to speak.
Phil Douglis28-Feb-2005 04:42
Agreed, Bruce! Sometimes black and white can change an ordinary image into an extraordinary one. This is exactly what has happened here. It is indeed more incongruous in monochrome than in color, and it does prod the imagination of the viewer to a much greater degree.
Guest 27-Feb-2005 18:17
"It asks questions and demands answers of the viewer. This becomes a more personal image in black and white, more challenging to the imagination, and considerably more incongruous as well." EXACTLY! This is a rich an fascinating image in B&W, and we are invited to take in all its many details.
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