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Fritz Goeckner 
Since the great days of Alfred
Stieglitz it has been fashionable to make “straight” photographs
in black and white. Without
painting or cutting and pasting, which are fiction, the photographer
records the facts presented by the lens and accepts the non-fiction
nature of photography. Although in the presence of color materials
it is a gross departure from reality, we congratulate ourselves on
the authenticity of this approach.
It has been an eloquent expressive medium.
But somewhere between the lens and the fixing
tray, sky blue and blood red vanish.
These pure colors can also be used to make photographs.
The colors are recorded free of the black and white, just as
the light and dark in a monochrome photograph are recorded
independent of color. And
as in monochrome the photo is freed from the expectation that it is
a literal representation of the subject.
The same degree of abstraction and control of the picture can
be achieved. On the
other hand these pictures are “straight” in the same sense as
any photograph; there is no manipulation of the image formed
by the
lens. A black and white photo may be perfectly realistic except for
the minor point of containing only light and dark.
A “straight color” photo may be exactly so realistic, but
containing only color.