I went into Mark Wallace’s Black & White Photography Techniques video looking for something practical: better light, better contrast, better control in my portraits and self-portraits.
Instead, I got handed a name I’d somehow missed: Josef Albers.
Wallace quotes him early with a line that lands like a creative constraint: “Shape is the enemy of colour.” And once you hear it, you start seeing it everywhere—especially in black and white. It’s not a “rule” so much as a reminder that form reads first, and colour can either support the structure… or dilute it.
So who was Josef Albers, and why does a Bauhaus teacher keep showing up in conversations about how we see?
Josef Albers in a few paragraphs
Josef Albers was a German-born artist and teacher who became one of the most influential voices in modern art education—largely because he treated seeing as a skill you can train, not a talent you either have or don’t.
He taught at the Bauhaus in Germany—an experimental school that sought to fuse art, design, craft, and industry into a single way of thinking—until the school was closed under the Nazi regime, after which Albers emigrated to the United States.
In the U.S., he became central to a different kind of experiment: teaching artists to observe relationships—between tones, edges, shapes, and colours—rather than chasing “style.” That mindset went on to shape generations of artists and designers through his teaching and writing.
“To open eyes” wasn’t a slogan. It was the curriculum.
On the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation site, Albers’ teaching goal is summed up with a deceptively simple phrase: “to open eyes.”
What I love about that is how unromantic it is.
Not “to express yourself.”
Not “to find your voice.”
Not “to develop a style.”
Just: learn to see more acutely—by working the fundamentals on purpose: line, shape, colour, texture.
That’s a photographer’s problem too. If I’m honest, most of the time I don’t fail because I don’t care. I fail because I’m not seeing clearly enough in the moment—especially with portraits, where the smallest shift in shadow or pose changes the whole read of the image.
Why a colour teacher matters to black and white
Here’s the twist: Albers is famous for colour studies, but the deeper idea underneath is that perception is relative. Colour changes depending on what surrounds it, how it’s lit, and how your eye compares one area to another.
That’s why his landmark book Interaction of Colour isn’t a “colour encyclopedia.” It’s a set of exercises and observations designed to prove that seeing is contextual—and trainable. It was published in 1963 after decades of teaching this approach.
And that’s exactly why it connects to black and white:
When you remove colour, you don’t remove complexity—you just force the image to stand on structure:
- shape
- value (light/dark)
- contrast
- texture
- edge control
- shadow design
Wallace’s “shape first” argument is essentially Albers translated into photography: if the structure is strong, the picture holds up even when you strip away the colour palette.
Homage to the Square: a laboratory disguised as art
Albers’ most recognized body of work is Homage to the Square—nested squares painted again and again, over decades, to explore how colours shift depending on their neighbours. The series began around 1950 and occupied him for the rest of his life.
On the surface, it can look almost too simple: squares inside squares.
But that’s the point. By keeping the shape constant, he makes the viewer confront the real subject: interaction. Colour isn’t “a thing,” it’s a relationship.
As photographers, we do the same thing whenever we lock down one variable to study another:
- same lens, different light
- same subject, different background
- same pose, different angle
- same scene, different exposure strategy
Albers’ squares are a reminder that limitations aren’t a prison—they’re a lab.
A lesser-known link: Albers also played with photography
One detail that surprised me (and feels oddly reassuring given why I started watching Wallace in the first place): Albers experimented with photography at the Bauhaus and produced a small but meaningful body of photo work, including photo collages, exploring perception and sequencing.
Even here, the through-line is the same: how does the eye assemble meaning? What happens when you repeat, reorder, crop, or shift context?
What I’m taking from Albers into my portraits and self-portraits
I’m not trying to become a Bauhaus painter. I’m trying to make stronger portraits.
But Albers gives me a few clean questions to bring into the studio (or into the street) that feel immediately useful:
1) Is the picture readable without colour?
If I squint, does the subject still “snap” into place? If not, the issue usually isn’t my camera—it’s the shape language and the value design.
2) Where is the structure?
What’s the dominant shape: jawline, shoulder triangle, hair silhouette, hand gesture, shadow edge? If I can’t name it, the image probably can’t lean on it.
3) Are my tones doing the work—or is my colour doing the work?
If colour conveys the emotion, black and white will feel thinner unless I rebuild it with contrast, texture, and intentional shadow (which Wallace also emphasizes in the editing section of this video).
4) Am I “opening my eyes,” or rushing to “make something good”?
This one stings (in a useful way). Albers’ teaching focus pulls me back to practice as observation, not practice as performance.
A simple Albers-style exercise (for photographers)
Try this on your next self-portrait session:
- Pick one pose and lock it.
- Pick one background and lock it.
- Shoot four frames, changing only the light position:
- front / on-axis
- 45° side
- 90° side
- backlight silhouette
- Convert all four to black and white.
- Ask: Which frame has the strongest shape read?
It’s basically the photographic version of Albers’ method: keep the form consistent, change one variable, study what actually changed.
Where I think this is going (for me)
I went into that video hunting for “better lighting.”
I came up with a longer-term idea: my next evolution is to see more deeply. Albers built a life around that premise. Wallace just handed it to me in photographer language.
And the best part is: It only requires attention.