I keep wondering if it's the medium of black-and-white film that makes people look so distinct and interesting, or if people were just fundamentally more distinct and interesting before colour photography.

I think there has been a change in the fashion of faces, and we are going through a boring patch. I continue to hope that popular tastes will weird up again. I also think there's a sorting process at work, in the same way as the 1930's and '40's produced some amazingly unremarkable movies, but no one bothers to rediscover them. That said, I really like black-and-white as a medium—because it is not (and cannot be) naturalistic, it may automatically transform its subjects into art.