Black and white

Black and white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, and hyphenated black-and-white when used as an adjective, is any of several monochrome forms in visual arts.

Black-and-white images are not usually starkly contrasted black and white. They combine black and white in a continuum producing a range of shades of gray. Further, many monochrome prints in still photography, especially those produced earlier in its development, were in sepia (mainly for archival stability), which yielded richer, subtler shading than reproductions in plain black-and-white.

Some popular black-and-white media of the past include:

The Wizard of Oz (1939) is in color when Dorothy is in Oz, but in black and white when she is in Kansas, although the latter scenes were actually in sepia when the film was originally released. The British film A Matter of Life and Death (1946) depicts the other world in black and white (a character says "one is starved of Technicolor … up there"), and earthly events in color. Similarly, Wim Wenders's film Wings of Desire (1987) uses sepia-tone black-and-white for the scenes shot from the angels' perspective. When Damiel, the angel (the film's main character), becomes a human the film changes to color, emphasising his new "real life" view of the world.

The films Pleasantville (1998), and Aro Tolbukhin. En la mente del asesino (2002), play with the concept of black-and-white as an anachronism, using it to selectively portray scenes and characters who are either more or less outdated or duller than the characters and scenes shot in full-color. This manipulation of color is utilized in the film Sin City (2005) and the occasional television commercial. In the documentary film Night and Fog (1955) a mix of black and white documentary footage is contrasted with color film of the present.

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