history nerd post go go go

[rex_dart]

Colorization of historical works, improvement or blasphemy?

Comments

[xballroomblitz]

Honestly, even though I'm a photographer and I preach the beauty of black and white photography, the colourization also ads the impact of reality. Black and white says "oh, it's old" but colour makes it go "oh, it was real". as said above, the Gettysburg one really got to me - I've never seen a colour battlefeild photo - it made it all very more real.

[alryssa]

You'll get a real kick out of these, in that case: http://www.oddee.com/item_66082.aspx

[redstar826]

I also spend a lot of time with old photographs, and I think this is really cool

[roseofjuly]

When it comes to history - which by definition is always inaccessible in so many ways - any sense of realness a person can get is a fucking valuable thing, and colorization is a brilliant way to make things more accessible and immediate and real. These evoked a very deep emotional reaction from me, and I think that's a positive.Truth. For some of these photos - for me, most brilliantly the famous ones of the early-to-mid 20th century - the colorization made the image feel more real. Now, these aren't just people and events of some history we've moved on from - holy shit, they're real. I know that I struggle to think about older times as 'real' - sometimes I imagine Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, the suffragette marches, etc., in my head in black and white. But in color, the migrant mom could be sitting on my street corner, or Nguyen Van Lem could've gotten shot yesterday

[rex_dart]

I totally agree. I would actually LOVE to see photos like this featured in history books both in black and white and colorized, together. You make a great point about the focal points, especially the self-immolation. I felt like I got a whole new perspective from that one. Not just because of the flames, which I do feel give a real sense of the heat, but because of the background too. Like holy shit, this wasn't happening in some bleak, greyscale world. It was happening on a beautiful day in a place that's not really any different from where I live. He drove there in a light blue car. I think the black and white does a better job of highlighting the act, but the color does a job the black and white could never do of giving a sense of being there.

[maladaptive]

But in color, the migrant mom could be sitting on my street corner, or Nguyen Van Lem could've gotten shot yesterday.

I was struck by how contemporary a lot of the pieces looked in color, but especially Nguyen Van Lem and the Buddhist monk. Almost like they were taken yesterday. The black and white ones are more impactful emotionally-- but that's just my own response to them because of the starkness of the black and white-- but the color just feels so much more real.

[tigerdreams]

On the other hand, it sort of takes away a little, too - there's less attention on the horror of this man burning alive.

That's not how I felt about that photo; the black-and-white original conveyed, to me, the information that, "oh, this is the monk who immolated himself in protest during Vietnam," whereas when I scrolled down to the color version, my mind went, "holy shit, that man is on fire!" It made the flames seem a lot more real to me, and I had a much harder time looking at it for any length of time.

I agree with you about how color affected the other photos, though, especially the Darwin one.

[yeats]

if anyone is interested/wants to cry, there are a whole bunch of color photographs that were taken using various early methods during wwi...you can see some of them here.

[rex_dart]

I remembered these and was just googling them when you posted them. I'm blown away every time I see them.

[schexyschteve]

The more you scroll down, the more they look like hand-drawn postcards.

[yeats]

that's because i was lazy and put my favorite ones first. whoops.

[sandvich]

I love this. Obviously they're wonderful and iconic photos in black and white, but the colorization makes it feel so much more real to me. Gettysburg and Anne made me well up.