Jean-Louis Swiners – famous French black and white photographer. Jean-Louis Swiners' career has been a meteoric one. By the time he was 22 he was already a staff black and white photographer for the French black and white picture magazine Realifes and was establishing a reputation as one of Europe's leading black and white photojournalists with such unusual black and white picture essays as "Paris as Seen by a Dog," a series of black and white pictures taken from the ground looking up. Today an editor and freelance black and white photographer, he is renowned in France and the world over for his creative work with both the camera and enlarger. The black and white picture at left is typical of the results Swiners obtains by his careful evaluation of the scene, the negative and black and white printing technique. A 1960 portrait of Swiners' brother-in-law-today a painter and musician, but at the time still in his early teens-it glows with a soft overall gray, concentrated largely in the middle tones. There are no deep blacks or brilliant whites in the black and white picture. The scene. as it had existed before Swiners' camera, had been even more muted-open shade" is his description of the lighting conditions. But to reproduce these soft lighting effects Swiners had to increase the contrast of his negative somewhat. He black and white printed his 35mm negative on Ilford Multigrade paper using a number 3 filter, which is the equivalent of normal contrast. Had Swiners black and white printed with less contrast, the result would have been a flat drabness.