Relating to the past can be difficult when all you have to look at are faded black and white photos that feel like they are from another planet. The mind thinks and remembers in color, meaning a color photograph is much easier to connect with than a black and white photo.
Thanks to film colorization historic photos restored to full color bring new life to history. Film colorization is a process that can be conducted digitally or by hand. Prior to the 1970s basic colorization was possible but required carefully painting color onto film stock.
The invention of the computer has completely altered the way we restore historic photos thanks to digital colorization. While the process is still time-consuming it is very much worth the hard work.
Research is conducted to match colors as closely to how they really looked as possible, but in some cases artists must guess which colors to use.
18 year old Russian girl being liberated from Dachau, April 1945Romanov sisters, Grand Duchesses Maria, Olga, Anastasia, and Tatiana, 1910Manhattan at sunset from the George Washington Bridge, December 1936“Here lies an unknown English Lieutenant killed in air combat” – Western Desert, Egypt, 1941Mary Winsor, founder and president of the Limited Suffrage Society, holds a sign during the American suffrage movement, 1910sLicking blocks of ice during the heat wave, NYC, 1912Three soldiers looking for the enemy from the shelter of a rubble-filled shed somewhere in France during World War I, 1917Two girls, Jean and Charlotte Potter, sit at the beach with their dog, ca. 1910-1915Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Soccer legend Pele. Sao Paulo, 1958An Ojibwe Native American spearfishing, Minnesota, 1908Jewish women and children arriving at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, Poland, 1944Duck Dynasty, 1926Coney Island, New York, 1905Film and fashion icon Audrey Hepburn, 1953A small child with a puppy – Point Pleasant,West Virginia, May 1943Flipping Burgers, 1938College students pile into a Volkswagen Beetle, 1965Baseball legend “Babe” Ruth, (ca. 1920), the year he joined the New York Yankees.War Paint, 1944Cab stand in Madison Square Park, New York, 1900Unemployed men outside Al Capone’s soup kitchen in Chicago during the Great Depression, 1931World War II propaganda posters in Port Washington, New York, 1942Marilyn Monroe’s USO performance, February 1954Operation Overlord, June 1944Coca-Cola vending point at the Helsinki Summer Olympics – July 18, 1952Miss America, 1924 – Ruth Malcomson.Sidewheeler Tashmoo leaving wharf in Detroit, 1901Harlem News Boy, 1943British tattoo artist George Burchett, the King of Tattooists, 1930Titanic sinks on April 15, 1912. Newspaper boy Ned Parfett sells copies of the evening paper bearing news of the disaster.Troops crouch inside a LCVP landing craft, just before landing on “Omaha” Beach on “D-Day”, 6 June 1944Clam seller on Mulberry Bend, New York, 1900A German soldier after being captured by American troops near Nicosia, 1943Women in witch costumes, 1875A Samurai, 1881The Flatiron Building, 1905Inventor and physicist Thomas Alva Edison. New Jersey, 1911Daredevil, 1917A Nihang Bodyguard, 1865Curb Market in NYC, 1900Observer on Iwo Jima, 1945Crowded Bunks in the Prison Camp at Buchenwald, April 16, 1945Jean Harlow, 1931Soviet T-34 tanks on the streets of Lvov, 1944Rita HayworthManfred von Richthofen, “The Red Baron”
Discover more from Yesterday Today
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
