Every year around Christmas time, I find myself yearning for heavy traffic in the city—to sit in a car, trailing colored lights with no end in sight. Every year around Christmas time, I don’t mind the silly displays of opulence and greed, or the flashing red and green abusing my eyes. Christmas is that special time of the year, often described with, and in color, but hardly ever in black and white.
Seeing Christmas in a black-and-white photograph feels like Christmas in a room: so constrained within a frame, within eye sight and the boundaries of belonging—so exclusive to the ugliness of the world. Whether we look at these photographs with joy, fear or plain mystery (perhaps even misery), Christmas in black and white brings haunting beauty.
Frankenmuth, MI. 2012Alec Soth—Magnum PhotosNew York City. December 20th, 1949. Christmas Tree At Rockefeller Plaza.Keystone-France—Gamma/Getty ImagesBrooklyn, New York. December 4, 2003. Bensonhurst.Gilles Peress—Magnum PhotosSavannah, GA. 1990. The Calvary Baptist Temple. The Living Christmas Tree; several large churches have living Christmas trees with up to 300 choir members as Christmas events. Special services, concerts and Christmas pageants depicting the birth of Jesus are held one or two weeks before Christmas. Sometimes even two (twin) trees are installed for special sound effects. Carl De Keyzer—Magnum PhotosNew York City December 20th, 1946. Christmas shoppers on 34th street walk through New York's first real snowfall. Earlier in the day, the weatherman warned of flurries and mentioned the possible white Christmas.Bettmann ArchiveNew York City. December 21st, 1947. Nurses of Lennox Hill Hospital took to the swimming pool as part of their Christmas party. Here they form a Christmas tree during the water ballet as Santa looks on. Jerry Engels—New York Daily News Archive/Getty ImagesGermany. 1930. Christmas time collection of Santa Claus dolls.Ullstein Bild—Getty ImagesSanta Claus laughing in 1935. FPG—Getty ImagesDeBary, FL. 1990. First Presbyterian Church of De Bary. Old people dressed as angels for the annual Christmas pageant "The Birth of Jesus" performed by the members of the church. Carl De Keyzer—Magnum PhotosNew York City. 1968. Santa leaving bar.Bruce Gilden—Magnum PhotosNew York City. November 26th, 1970. A snowman, eight tiny reindeer and a few thousand other accompany Santa Claus as he sails through Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in Times Square. Hal Mathewson—New York Daily News Archive/Getty ImagesNew York City. 1977. Fifth Avenue, from the series, "Volunteers of America."Susan Meiselas—Magnum PhotosFort Lauderdale, FL. 1949. Santa Delayed.AP
