Tuesday, April 25, 2017

History Has Never Looked So...Unhistorical


And that’s what’s so cool about it!

This is going to be a short post, because the best thing I can do is give you a link and let you do your own exploring...but first, here’s the background. A few weeks ago, my awesomely awesome nephew sent me a link to an amazing thing: a collection of 19th and early 20th century black and white photographs that have been, after much research, carefully and sensitively colorized by professional artists.

I suspect that most of us have an unconscious idea in our heads that the world was black and white before ca. 1960.  It’s so easy to look at old daguerreotypes and cartes de visite and early photos and think of them as just that—dead images of dead people.

But the images here will change that idea—and blow your mind.  Czar Nicholas and his daughters...immigrants at Ellis Island...D-Day...dozens of Civil War images of soldiers and generals, both posed and casual...ranchers and polar explorers and Manhattan newsboys.  Scroll through these images, and come back and tell us what you’ve seen. But make sure you’ve got a spare hour before you start.


You’re welcome. ☺

3 comments:

Regina Scott said...

How amazing! I've seen some colorization before--my mother has a couple photos of ancestors. But normally the color is kind of washed over, with tiny details removed in the process. The process used in these photos is much more precise, and more convincing. Wonderful!

Marissa Doyle said...

Yes! That, and it looks like a lot of the people working on these are doing their research in order to get details historically correct, which is wonderful.

Lynn Lovegreen said...

Wow, thank you!