Black+White Photography: Lewes's Champion of the Monochrome Image
Black+White Photography is a British magazine dedicated entirely to monochrome photography, published by GMC Publications Ltd from Lewes in East Sussex. Created in 2001, it has spent a quarter of a century arguing, issue by issue, that the black-and-white image is not a limitation but a discipline and an art form in its own right. Its website is blackandwhitephotographymag.co.uk, and its subscription pages describe it, in its publisher's phrase, as the champion of the black and white image.
The magazine appears every four weeks and runs to more than a hundred pages. Its issue numbering tells the story of its longevity: issue 4 was dated October–November 2001, issue 41 appeared in December 2004, issue 157 in December 2013, and the publisher's subscription shop has recently looked ahead to issue 318. Few specialist photography titles anywhere can point to an unbroken run of that length in a single, deliberately narrow subject.
Overview
Black+White Photography covers a range of genres within monochrome: documentary, portraiture, still life, landscape and street photography, as its publisher summarises. Each issue features contemporary images from recognised names in monochrome photography alongside work from newer photographers, in-depth technique articles, product news and reviews.
A defining feature is reader participation. Photographers are given the chance to have their work published by submitting images through the magazine's website. That open door, combined with portfolios and interviews, makes the magazine function as both a showcase and a school for monochrome photographers, whether they work with film, digital cameras, or a mixture of the two across their practice.
History and Founding
The magazine was created in 2001, published by GMC Publications in Lewes. Its early issues appeared under editor Ailsa McWhinnie, who is credited as editor on issues from the magazine's first years, including issue 41 in December 2004, and who also authored photography books including work on travel photography. The early covers show the template that became familiar: a strong monochrome cover image, features on individual photographers, and practical articles on processes and printing.
The title was launched at an interesting moment. Digital photography was rapidly displacing film in the wider market, yet black-and-white work retained a strong following among fine-art and documentary photographers. A magazine devoted solely to monochrome could serve both the traditional darkroom printer and the digital photographer converting colour files, and Black+White Photography built its audience across that transition.
Publisher and Ownership
The publisher is GMC Publications Ltd, part of the GMC group based at 166 High Street, Lewes, East Sussex — the address printed in the magazine's own masthead. GMC is a specialist publisher of craft, photography and lifestyle titles, and Black+White Photography sits alongside its sister photography title, Outdoor Photography, in the same Lewes-based stable.
The magazine's International Standard Serial Number is 1473-2467, as shown in its published masthead, which also records that it is published every four weeks by GMC Publications Ltd. Subscriptions, single issues and back issues are sold through the GMC subscriptions shop, with tiered offers for six, twelve and twenty-four issues and additional savings for UK subscribers paying by direct debit.
Editorial Content and Sections
The content of Black+White Photography blends portfolios, interviews, technique and news. Portfolio features present bodies of work by individual photographers across the genres the magazine covers, from landscape and still life to documentary and street work. Technique articles explain how monochrome images are made and refined, covering the choices that matter most in black and white: subject selection, tonal range, contrast and the presentation of the final image.
Product news and reviews keep readers in touch with equipment and materials relevant to monochrome practice. The magazine is printed to a standard that allows the images to carry the argument; its publisher and reviewers alike note the quality of reproduction, which matters more for a monochrome title than for almost any other kind of magazine, since the photographs are the content rather than an accompaniment to it.
Notable Editors and Contributors
Ailsa McWhinnie, the founding-era editor, shaped the magazine in its early years and remained associated with British photography publishing through her books and editorial work. Discussion among long-standing readers records her stepping away from the title after its first decade or so, a change readers noticed precisely because the editorial voice had been so consistent.
Elizabeth Roberts subsequently became editor, and was in that role by 2018, when she informed the winner of the Black+White Photographer of the Year competition, and in 2020, when the magazine's masthead carried her name as editor with an editorial email at the GMC group. Contributors across the magazine's history have included leading monochrome practitioners as interviewees and portfolio subjects, together with judges and writers such as Eddie Ephraums, who judged the 2018 photographer of the year competition and commented on the standard of entries.
Audience and Readership
The magazine addresses both amateur and professional photographers, in the description of photography directories that list it, and is regarded as essential reading for anyone interested or working in the creative area of monochrome imagery, according to its publisher. That dual audience is characteristic of British specialist photography publishing: the enthusiastic amateur and the professional share an interest in strong portfolios and honest technique.
Its readership is international. Subscribers in the United States and elsewhere have taken the magazine by mail from England for many years, and the publisher's subscription operation sells to the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the world. Reader discussion from as far away as Illinois and Florida, debating the arrival of particular issues, testifies to that overseas following for a magazine made in a small Sussex town.
Print and Digital Editions
Black+White Photography is published in print every four weeks, with issues of more than a hundred pages. The print edition's reproduction quality is central to its appeal: a magazine about tonal subtlety must itself demonstrate that subtlety on the page.
Digital editions accompany the print magazine. The publisher has used digital editions to extend content, as in February 2018, when the digital edition of the competition issue carried an extra twenty-four pages of pictures from the Black+White Photographer of the Year entries. Back issues are sold through the GMC shop in print while stocks last, with digital versions sometimes available when the printed copy has sold out, allowing new readers to explore the archive.
Black+White Photographer of the Year
The magazine's best-known project beyond its pages is the Black+White Photographer of the Year competition, run in association with Fujifilm. The competition is biennial and attracts monochrome entries from all over the world. For the 2018 award, the winner was Rachael Talibart, with a dramatic image of a wild sea shot at Newhaven on the south coast. Talibart, an experienced sailor as well as a photographer, received the title and a Fujifilm X-Pro2 camera with three lenses.
Second prize in 2018 went to Eduardo Moreno, a photographer based in Nigeria, who received a Fujifilm X100F, and third prize to Aqua Lin from Taiwan, who received a Fujifilm X-T20. Judge Eddie Ephraums remarked on the exceptionally high quality of entries that year. The February 2018 issue of the magazine, published on 18 January that year, featured some of the best entries including all three winners. The spread of winners across three continents underlined the international reach the competition, and the magazine, had achieved.
Monochrome in a Colour World
The editorial premise of Black+White Photography is that removing colour changes how a photograph is read. Without colour, structure, texture, light and gesture carry the meaning, and photographers who work in monochrome speak of learning to see in tones and shapes. The magazine's interviews return repeatedly to that idea: photographers describe black and white as one step removed from reality, offering a fresh perspective on familiar subjects.
By holding to that single premise for more than three hundred issues, the magazine has documented how monochrome practice has survived every technological change thrown at it, from the decline of the high-street darkroom to the arrival of mirrorless cameras and high-quality digital conversion. Its pages record both the continuity of the tradition and the new work being made within it.
Recent Developments
Black+White Photography continues to publish on its four-weekly cycle from Lewes, with the publisher's shop promoting forthcoming issues in the 310s and selling subscriptions at up to thirty per cent below cover price. The title remains one of two GMC photography magazines serving distinct communities — landscape and outdoor photographers through its sister title, and monochrome specialists through this one.
Its survival is a reminder that specialism can be a strength in magazine publishing. By refusing to become a general photography magazine, Black+White Photography has kept a clear identity for twenty-five years: a champion, in print, of the black-and-white image, and a home for the photographers who still believe it says things colour cannot.
