![Atop Empire State- in construction; Chrysler Bldg & [Daily] News in middle foreground. (1931)](http://www.retronaut.co/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Atop-Empire-State-in-construction-Chrysler-Bldg-Daily-News-in-middle-foreground.-1931--199x123.jpg "Balancing on the Empire State, 1920s")
Charles Darwin
Abraham Lincoln
August Strindberg
Mark Twain
Theodore Roosevelt
Charlie Chaplin
Anne Frank
'Harvest of Death', American Civil War
Canada Dock, Liverpool, 1909
Boy in the Blitz
Pearl Harbour
Operations Cross Road Baker at the Bikini Atoll
…
All colourisations by Sanna Dullaway
Those are some of the most stunning examples of colourisation that I have ever seen. Really sympathetically done. The one of Dorothea Lange is particularly beautiful.
In the harvest of Death image, from the Civil War, the trousers are wrong they should be sky blue, not brown. These are Union dead, and the uniform shown on the bodies is a dark blue sack coat and sky blue trousers.
wow this really makes the photos come alive – a great way to keep important historical images relevant to people today
Thank you so much for changing my perspective of certain people/moments. Some are personal heroes.
It’s not a photo of Dorthea Lange-Lange is the photographer.
It is a photo of Florence Owens, a 32 year old migrant worker whose husband died during the depression. Interesting story behind it… http://www.picture-america.com/LuceB/Migrant-Mother-Project/migrant-mother-main.htm
A truly superb job. One quibble, however, from a historical perspective,regarding the `Harvest of Death’ photo. Union soldiers in the Civil War wore dark (navy) blue blouses with sky blue trousers, not the butternut coloured trousers depicted here. Some Confederate units, however, were clad entirely in butternut uniforms. I appreciate that this may have posed some contrast problems for the colourist. Good job, nonetheless.
Solid work. These images are Fantastic. Thanks goes to the hard work and sharing.
I can appreciate all of these as a demonstration of the skill of the colorizer. But on an aesthetic level, colorizing some of these makes no sense. Granted, some of these were originally in black & white because it was the only film stock readily available at the time and/or they were taken by photojournalists who worked for newspapers that at the time were technically unable to reproduce pictures in their papers in color anyway, and if color film had been more easily available or reproducible in mass media these certainly would have been taken in color to begin with.
But for at least a few of these, particularly the Yousuf Karsh photos of Winston Churchill & Albert Einstien, Black & White was a deliberate artistic choice, and these pictures are lighted & composed specifically for Black & White. In these cases colorizing them adds nothing and in fact takes away a great deal of their power.
Che should have been colored with darker skin.
What a neat idea. This is definately a process I associate with the past. My favorites are Darwin and the Dorthy Counts image – which looks like it could have been colourised in the 50′s. Some of the effects in some of these black and white photographs make some of the colourisations less effective, like the portraits Chaplin and Hitchcock. One thing I noticed was that they were all made a warm, healthy looking color. Were any of them pasty, or a bit red? I guess it’d be hard to find out at this point.
Sanna,
I’m putting together a 75th anniversary of the 1937 flood in Louisville, KY exhibit and I’d like your permission to put a a print of your “The American Way” in a display case as a “compare and contrast” to the original Margaret Bourke-White image I have in the exhibit. Let me know.
Bill
Love the coloring- it’s awesome to see… I didn’t recognize Charlie Chaplin- I have always wanted to see a color photo of him, but mainly because he had the bluest of blue eyes- not brown!
Super impressive….
Wow. These are by far the best colourised photographs I have ever seen. So realistic and not too “water-colory” like mine normally turn out.
Wow really great. It’s the first time I have came across colorized photos. I believe your work here is great whether it’s good enough or not. It certainly adds thought towards the medium regardless of the contents. I would love to know what the process involves. Have you ever considered subtle tinting instead of complete colorizing?