Black-and-white photo challenge, what’s it about?

Recently, my Facebook feed have been dominated by these black-and-white photos with the captions “Challenge accepted”. I thought it was just a regular social media challenge to see who has the hottest black-and-white selfie since there’s not really enough explanations.

I found myself eating a humble pie when I saw famous names such as Solenn Heusaff, Angel Locsin and Maine Mendoza took part. When celebrities are involved, it usually means something important like a massive public awareness or a campaign for a cause.

As of this writing, 6.1M photos have been uploaded on Instagram with the hashtag #challengeaccepted. Different people [mostly women] from all walks of life have participated within the last 48 hours.

The challenge can be traced back in 2016 as a social media campaign that aims to spread awareness for the battle against cancer. It only just resurfaced after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s viral speech. The speech was against sexist remarks leveled at her by Rep. Ted Yoho that led to more posts about women’s empowerment. Thus, making the challenge trending again.

But why in grayscale?

You may think it has a connection with Taylor Swift’s newly released album Folklore that uses black and white aesthetics to communicate her artistic intent. It’s not. There’s a more compelling reason for the choice of monochrome photo.

Apparently, there’s something special about the black and white that makes a photo powerful in photography. David Campany, managing director of programs at the International Center of Photography in New York explained that “there’s this idea that there’s something kind of truer about black and white…On a technical level, it’s actually less true, because it’s less realistic, it’s got less information about the world. But on top of that, we have all sorts of metaphors about black and white: If you ask someone to give you the unvarnished truth, you’ll say, ‘give it to me in black and white.’ So we have this idea that facts are black and white and color is some kind of wild, luxurious distraction”.

To make sense of it, the use of monochrome is to send the message loud and clear — women are a force to reckon with.

When it’s your turn to accept the challenge, make sure you know what you’re standing for. There’s nothing wrong with adding extra hashtags that explain the intent of the campaign rather than vague #challengeaccepted. Otherwise, it’ll just be a meaningless selfie leaving uninformed people like me confused.

Sources:

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/07/9937448/black-and-white-photography-social-media-challenge, https://news.abs-cbn.com/ancx/culture/spotlight/07/28/20/before-you-post-that-selfie-heres-what-you-should-know-about-the-black-and-white-challenge