“Through absence of color, three-dimensionality and motion, the black-and-white photography is ipso facto ‘unnatural’. It expresses reality symbolically: gray tone values instead of color, two-dimensional projection (perspective) instead of space, blurredness or single-phase instead of constant motion. It is ‘symbolic’ in the same sense that speech and writing are, where sounds (words) are symbols for objects and conceptions, and signs (letters) are symbols for sounds (words). Photography means ‘reproduction’ only in the rare cases where the rendering of a two-dimensional, black-and-white object is the aim; otherwise it must be called a translation.”

Andreas Feininger, Feininger on Photography (1949, pp.195-196)