I disagree. Black and white for documentary plays on the nostalgic aspects. We might think of documentary as being black and white for the same reason some here think of steam trains as being monochromatic.That's how it as in our youth. Documentary photography is about information. Removing colour is removing information.
I think this is probably another of the 'almost as old as photography' questions, but I'll bite.
Everything you do in making a photograph is removing information - your choice of focal length, framing of the shot, aperture, shutter speed and the moment that the shutter is triggered all tend to remove information in one way or another. Even rendering an image of a three dimensional world on a two dimensional plane is to remove information that was present in the original scene. The choice to exclude colour is just one of many such decisions.
I'd go as far as to say that one of the key skills of a photographer is in removing the information that does not actively inform the image, so as to enhance that which does. It's a process of selection, much as a sculptor chips away at stone, working with and removing the material to reveal the sculpture that is within.
For me, black and white (like film) has no place in the 21st century. I can't get past the feeling of nostalgia, or 'artiness', that black and white invokes in me these days. I might make an exception for one-off pictures that exist solely to look nice in a frame , but for documentary photographty it has to be colour. for me. YMMV. etc.
I guess what I'm saying is that the matter is as much about how the people looking at the pictures think about them as much as how the photographer does.
Well, that's a risk you take when you put a creation out into the world; your vision may not be how others see it, or it will be taken and used in ways that you cannot imagine.
For myself, monochrome is not nostalgic, it's quite modern. I defy anyone to look at the work of Alexander Rodchenko, László Moholy-Nagy or Eugen Wiškovský in the 1920s and 30s and say that it is nostalgic simply because it is black and white. I will concede that it is often used that way in contemporary photography, as a [I should perhaps say lazy] shorthand suggesting an image from the past; this seems to hold true more in amateur photography.
This Way Up by
Rob Telford, on Flick
Monochrome often allows me to convey better the graphic qualities of the scene; it tunes out the distractions of colour. An abstraction of the world can reveal something about it that may not have been otherwise visible.
Certainly thinking how the shot will appear in monochrome is my default approach and, with digital, if I use colour it is because of what colour will
add to the photograph. If that leads to 'artiness' I'm ready to plead guilty, but there is no reason why documentary cannot also be elevated into some form of art.
National Sports Centre by
Rob Telford, on Flickr
Hexagons by
Rob Telford, on Flickr
To return to the OP's original question, I think we must draw a distinction between the subject and the
purposes of a photograph; that is the intent in taking it and the uses to which it will be put.
If we are talking about different subjects, then broadly, no, I do not think there are particular classes of subjects, such as steam trains or people that are better suited to colour or black and white. However, there are certainly different purposes which suit colour better.
In the 1950s and 1960s, catalogue shopping companies like Kays and Littlewoods were early adopters of full colour printing which allowed them best to display the goods they were selling, especially clothes, for which colour was an important factor. For that
purpose, once affordable colour was available, it clearly made little sense to continue with black and white photographs (or hand drawn illustrations as they had been using in the 1920s). Internet shopping has taken over that retail niche and for that purpose today, it would be unusual that colour should not be used.
This may be what Ed is alluding to in the context of documentary photography. If you are cataloging the plumage of wild birds, then their colour is likely information that will be of interest to ornithologists and you will want to capture it. If you are documenting their behaviour, then the colour of the animal may be less important.
There are occasions, however, where colour itself becomes the purpose of the photograph. This image would probably make less sense in monochrome.
1000 Umbrellas by
Rob Telford, on Flickr
Similarly, I have a short series of photographs of red columns on buildings. The colour is the central theme that caused me to make the photographs, so obviously it requires colour for it to work.
Red Column by
Rob Telford, on Flickr
Although I did choose to subvert the theme somewhat with these two different columns on the same building juxtaposed together. Both of them are colour images, the second column happens to be painted black, leaving the image practically indistinguishable from a monochrome photograph. Nevertheless, in context with the other, red column, it was quite important that the image of the black one to be in colour.
Red Column VI by
Rob Telford, on Flickr
Red Column VII [not red] by
Rob Telford, on Flickr
The only other way to deal with this conceptually would be to say that we will photograph in colour the class of subjects which is 'colourful things' (such as the umbrellas) but that would not deal with my black column on a white ground. That is not a colourful thing.
Setting aside the subject itself and examining the purpose for making that photograph is a more elegant approach to determine how it should be treated; in this situation colour adds something to our understanding of the image.
