About black and white

According to additive colour theory (colour generated as light),

Black is the lack, the absence of any possible colors in the visible light spectrum - and therefore not a colour - while

White, on the contrary, is the combination of all of all possible colors in the visible light spectrum, which is more usually explained as being "all the colors of the rainbow". That is, if you take the classical round wheel we've learnt at school (a round disk with red, yellow and blue being the primary colours in its opposite thirds) and then spin the colour wheel, the result you will get is white.

In the Lament of images (Alfredo Jaar, 2002) it could be thus interesting how it is sometimes the exposition to all sort of colours that turns us blind - just like the overexposure to images of catastrophe can turn us finally pathetic.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_black_and_white_if_they_are_not_colors ; http://www.colormatters.com/vis_bk_white.html