Comments on: WWII in Color

WWII in Color

desjardins — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:46:24 -0800

World War II pictures in color. Some favorites: Soldiers at the Coliseum. A WAC discusses sailing with an old hand. A canine "soldier" dons a gas mask during training. African-American MPs on Motorbike Patrol. Other galleries: WWII in Color. | A searchable database of color slides.| Library of Congress collection (also includes Depression-era photographs) | WWII in pictures (mostly Germans; one graphic photo halfway down)

By: KokuRyu

KokuRyu — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:57:08 -0800

Undead dogfoot zombies... attack!

By: briank

briank — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:03:54 -0800

Even though we're not accustomed to seeing many color images from WWII, it seems to me that these are more approachable than the WWI color images. The WWI pictures that have been linked here a few times have an other-worldly quality to them. Of course, there's so much more photography from WWII in general, that the imagery of that war is more familiar. Great links!

By: rageagainsttherobots

rageagainsttherobots — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:13:38 -0800

I love the style of these old film stocks. So saturated.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:31:18 -0800

THE WACS ARE EVERYWHERE EVERYWHERE I TELL YOU!

By: Sargas

Sargas — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:46:58 -0800

I love all these colour photographs of the days of yore. It seems much more "real" and relatable when the photos are in colour. At least for me who was born in the late 80's.

By: BlackLeotardFront

BlackLeotardFront — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:00:36 -0800

Ah, these are excellent. thank you.

By: Sova

Sova — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:57:10 -0800

These are excellent pictures, but also I find colour photographs of earlier periods, and I hope this is the right word, confusing. The colour brings to them a seeming closeness and immediacy, more like how we experience our world now, and less like the experience of the world derived from black and white photographs of the same period. I find this one particularly powerful in that respect, and it seems like other people feel the same way about the photographs as a whole. But I think that the closer history comes to depicting the then in the same ways as the now, the less distance we have to remind - or even require - us to seek and create an interpretation of that history. It's not a complaint really, just a more 'keep the guard up' kinda statement, cause some day these really will be 'history' in the sense we have no proper tools from our daily lives to understand that time. I suppose it is like saying that even if we had CBS reporting from the Pnyx, we shouldn't mistake it for Congress. Urh, overthinking before bedtime, never good, but I hope that makes sense. (PS When does science invent a recolourfier? I'm waiting...)

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:03:02 -0800

The colour brings to them a seeming closeness and immediacy, more like how we experience our world now, and less like the experience of the world derived from black and white photographs of the same period. I find this one particularly powerful in that respect, and it seems like other people feel the same way about the photographs as a whole. Huh. WWII never really felt that "distant" to me, in fact, when thinking about history WWII always kind of felt like the "birth" somehow of the "modern" world. Like I would find the 1930s an alien and historic world, but I would feel more at home in the 1950s. But what's even stranger to think about is how that was only a 20 year difference, like the difference between 1989 and 2009, a time span that's actually comprehensible to me. And the on the other hand, you have people running around in the 1950s who were born in the 1880s and such, which is kind of strange to think about.

By: drhydro

drhydro — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:38:21 -0800

you have people running around in the 1950s who were born in the 1880s and such, My wife's grandmother came to Iowa from Indiana in a covered wagon..... before she passed away at 105, she had flown from coast to coast in a 737. My brain hurtz.

By: bjrn

bjrn — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:15:47 -0800

The Imperial War Museum has a big collection of photographs online here. Just enter Colour under Colour / B&W and Second World War under Period. Most images aren't all that large, and all watermarked though, but if you really like one you can buy a large copy (both digital and print).

By: lapolla

lapolla — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:26:01 -0800

there's a popeye in them pictures. a real live popeye!

By: rongorongo

rongorongo — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 06:22:25 -0800

Sova wrote "(PS When does science invent a recolourfier? I'm waiting...)" Have a look at this paper (with examples) from 2005 - I am not sure how they have progressed since then but certainly the results are impressive to my eyes.

By: tommasz

tommasz — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 07:26:01 -0800

I love to search archives like these for pictures of my dad but I've never been successful. I'm sure one of these days I'll find something, I just hope it's soon.

By: grapefruitmoon

grapefruitmoon — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:05:27 -0800

Oh, holy... in black and white, these types of pictures are both gruesome and powerful, but in color... it's almost too much. You can see blood spatter on the pants of soldiers at a concentration camp. The reality of the situation is way more palpable than in b/w... and yet, more surreal, since the colors aren't quite right and it totally, TOTALLY looks like ketchup.

By: grapefruitmoon

grapefruitmoon — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:08:42 -0800

(Or maybe that's something wrong with the film - another photo has those red/orange marks in all the wrong places. Or maybe it's ketchup.)

By: Katherine Kimber

Katherine Kimber — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:02:39 -0800

The thing I notice about these old color photos is how human the soldiers look. It's such a contrast from photos of soldiers today, who have so much body armor that the individual is obscured. The soldiers (and civilians) from "back then" were just people, taken from their ordinary everyday lives and put into extraordinary circumstances. It's the common and shared humanity that strikes me.

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:34:35 -0800

I just started reading Rick Atkinson's The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 . I've read a lot about World War II, but I was shocked by this: Someone was killed an average of every three seconds from September 1939 to September 1945. A quick calculation based on Wikipedia's figures--62,000,000 combined Axis and Allied civilian and military fatalities--seems to confirm.