Adding Color Evokes Empathy
June 17, 2018 9:37 AM Subscribe
The Passionate Photo Colorizers Who Are Humanizing the Past
Marina Amaral has a book coming out in August with Dan Jones, The Colour of Time, October 1, 2018 (US Amazon pre-order link)
“I love how colorized photos enable me to imagine these guys walking around today,” one commenter remarked. “I feel like I saw this guy at the store,” wrote another.
Marina Amaral has a book coming out in August with Dan Jones, The Colour of Time, October 1, 2018 (US Amazon pre-order link)
Spanning more than a hundred years of world history from the reign of Queen Victoria and the American Civil War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the beginning of the Space Age, The Colour of Time will chart the rise and fall of empires, the achievements of science, industry and the arts, the tragedies of war and the politics of peace, and the lives of the men and women who made history. We will tell you this fascinating story through 200 stunning colorized photographs - the majority of them will be seen in color for the first time ever.Images colorized by Amaral and other artists, such as a migrant mother with her children, Robert Johnson, and many more can be found on the Colorized History subreddit.
Why do these reproductions resonate so deeply with so many people? Color images have a greater impact on our visual memory, and allow details we might otherwise gloss over to leap off the page.r/ColorizedHistory previously (2013)
The "banana docks" colourisation took the better part of a month. I wish I still had that attention span.
It's a testatement to their skill that a deft touch and much effort really does bring these "yesterday" photos into today.
posted by sektah at 9:45 AM on June 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
It's a testatement to their skill that a deft touch and much effort really does bring these "yesterday" photos into today.
posted by sektah at 9:45 AM on June 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
Some of these colorized photos are beautiful. I can’t imagine the research that goes into getting these colors even plausibly correct.
Thanks hilaryjade for posting!
posted by fencerjimmy at 9:54 AM on June 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Thanks hilaryjade for posting!
posted by fencerjimmy at 9:54 AM on June 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Wow, so many of those are fantastic!
Also, I was glad to see that while the Atlas Obscura article missed it, the Reddit thread addressed the issue of the choices the artist made in the recolouration of Dorothea Lange's photograph of Florence Owen Thompson (known as the Migrant Mother). Florence Owen Thompson was Cherokee woman with pale brown/hazel eyes, but the artist gave her blue eyes and skin tones that suggests they thought she was a white woman. It's still a nice color job, but a good reminder that colorization is painting on top of an original through the filter of an artist's choices, assumptions and biases - and not necessarily restoring them to the truth of what was originally captured.
posted by haruspicina at 10:08 AM on June 17, 2018 [53 favorites]
Also, I was glad to see that while the Atlas Obscura article missed it, the Reddit thread addressed the issue of the choices the artist made in the recolouration of Dorothea Lange's photograph of Florence Owen Thompson (known as the Migrant Mother). Florence Owen Thompson was Cherokee woman with pale brown/hazel eyes, but the artist gave her blue eyes and skin tones that suggests they thought she was a white woman. It's still a nice color job, but a good reminder that colorization is painting on top of an original through the filter of an artist's choices, assumptions and biases - and not necessarily restoring them to the truth of what was originally captured.
posted by haruspicina at 10:08 AM on June 17, 2018 [53 favorites]
The documentary Warsaw Uprising used this technique a few years ago along with new foley and dialogue work, and it was astonishing.
posted by migurski at 11:36 AM on June 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by migurski at 11:36 AM on June 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Adding Color Evokes Empathy
Boy, that is a metaphor and a half.
posted by Celsius1414 at 11:43 AM on June 17, 2018 [11 favorites]
Boy, that is a metaphor and a half.
posted by Celsius1414 at 11:43 AM on June 17, 2018 [11 favorites]
This is rad!
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:09 PM on June 17, 2018
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:09 PM on June 17, 2018
I can’t imagine the research that goes into getting these colors even plausibly correct.
This is the thing that bugs me about colourised photos, even if the colours are historically accurate, beyond knowing the sky should be some shade of blue, there is no way to know even roughly what most of those colours should be. When I look at the Dorothea Lange photo, all the colours are just a bit too perfectly matched - like a fashion editor has picked out what they should wear.
Are we supposed to empathise with them more because they (seemingly) have the good taste to wear outfits in pleasing colour combinations?
Conciously or unconciously the color artists are editorialising and that significantly reduces the value of these photos for me.
posted by Lanark at 12:49 PM on June 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
This is the thing that bugs me about colourised photos, even if the colours are historically accurate, beyond knowing the sky should be some shade of blue, there is no way to know even roughly what most of those colours should be. When I look at the Dorothea Lange photo, all the colours are just a bit too perfectly matched - like a fashion editor has picked out what they should wear.
Are we supposed to empathise with them more because they (seemingly) have the good taste to wear outfits in pleasing colour combinations?
Conciously or unconciously the color artists are editorialising and that significantly reduces the value of these photos for me.
posted by Lanark at 12:49 PM on June 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
mixed feelings about the accuracy, but after spending an hour going through the subreddit these colorizers have, the results are certainly fascinating - the campaign photo of FDR in 1944 was especially interesting - the poor man looks exhausted in color
posted by pyramid termite at 1:16 PM on June 17, 2018
posted by pyramid termite at 1:16 PM on June 17, 2018
Are we supposed to empathise with them more because they (seemingly) have the good taste to wear outfits in pleasing colour combinations?
I think we might, there seems to be some evidence for it at least, if you accept good taste in color combinations as contributing to a person's perceived beauty.
posted by ipsative at 1:51 PM on June 17, 2018
I think we might, there seems to be some evidence for it at least, if you accept good taste in color combinations as contributing to a person's perceived beauty.
posted by ipsative at 1:51 PM on June 17, 2018
Color me ambivalent about this.
On the one hand, I'm astonished by the empathetic leap colorizing brings.
On the other... I'm with Lanark and others about how colorizing also imposes an editorial layer.
And years of seeing colorized black and white films have build up a color resistance for me.
posted by doctornemo at 2:17 PM on June 17, 2018 [10 favorites]
On the one hand, I'm astonished by the empathetic leap colorizing brings.
On the other... I'm with Lanark and others about how colorizing also imposes an editorial layer.
And years of seeing colorized black and white films have build up a color resistance for me.
posted by doctornemo at 2:17 PM on June 17, 2018 [10 favorites]
Right so the problem I have is that those attributes are strongly correlated with being middle or upper class and/or having above average income. You acclimatize people to pictures that have been doctored like this, what happens when they run into people in real life who look genuinely poor - that empathy is going to disappear.
It's the instagramification of documentary photography, if this was a 1930s fashion shoot I wouldn't have a problem with it.
posted by Lanark at 2:18 PM on June 17, 2018
It's the instagramification of documentary photography, if this was a 1930s fashion shoot I wouldn't have a problem with it.
posted by Lanark at 2:18 PM on June 17, 2018
I've been collecting photos semi-seriously for ~20 years, and still don't really get the need for colorization. For me, it's the pseudo-intimacy with someone long dead via the startling clarity of a good carte de visite or tinype that calls up the ghosts and gives me that little shiver.
posted by ryanshepard at 2:19 PM on June 17, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by ryanshepard at 2:19 PM on June 17, 2018 [6 favorites]
While it may difficult to portray historically accurate colors, I'm pretty sure black and white is way off.
Snarkiness aside I do think there's a legitimate concern in accurately and sensitively portraying ethnicity when colorizing historical photographs and it's also important to make it clear that they are reconstructions and not actual color photographs.
Of course there's an editorial process involved in the colorization—the same way there was one involved in the original black and white photograph.
posted by dweingart at 2:26 PM on June 17, 2018 [12 favorites]
Snarkiness aside I do think there's a legitimate concern in accurately and sensitively portraying ethnicity when colorizing historical photographs and it's also important to make it clear that they are reconstructions and not actual color photographs.
Of course there's an editorial process involved in the colorization—the same way there was one involved in the original black and white photograph.
posted by dweingart at 2:26 PM on June 17, 2018 [12 favorites]
The difference is that people colorizing today are operating from a different historical perspective. Historic editorial decisions are still themselves a part of history, and are often studied in their own right. The photographer’s biases are important to consider, but they still tell us a lot about history. The modern artist colorizing a picture projects their own biases and assumptions about the past onto a historic document. They can make pictures appear more lifelike to a modern audience, but as noted above they can also dramatically change meaning or significance without even being aware of it.
In general I think it’s good that people feel more connected to these pictures, but the risk is that it’ll be a false connection that simply reaffirms what they already imagined about the past, instead of really exposing them to something different. Part of curation means recognizing and anticipating the biases and assumptions your audience will bring, so that you can forestall certain mistaken impressions (like with a caption saying “photographs like these were often staged to reaffirm the myth of the...”), or to decide not to include them at all if they’d only muddy the message you’re trying to convey. A book like this is a curated collection, and I admire the work that went into these, but I worry that perspective and context weren’t given due consideration. We all have our biases when it comes to history and culture, and that’s ok, but we need to be aware of them.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 2:54 PM on June 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
In general I think it’s good that people feel more connected to these pictures, but the risk is that it’ll be a false connection that simply reaffirms what they already imagined about the past, instead of really exposing them to something different. Part of curation means recognizing and anticipating the biases and assumptions your audience will bring, so that you can forestall certain mistaken impressions (like with a caption saying “photographs like these were often staged to reaffirm the myth of the...”), or to decide not to include them at all if they’d only muddy the message you’re trying to convey. A book like this is a curated collection, and I admire the work that went into these, but I worry that perspective and context weren’t given due consideration. We all have our biases when it comes to history and culture, and that’s ok, but we need to be aware of them.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 2:54 PM on June 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Some of them have that uncanny valley feel; the colors feel flat and too bright. This one on reddit is really good though.
posted by AFABulous at 3:11 PM on June 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by AFABulous at 3:11 PM on June 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
There’s definitely something to be said for the jolt of realization that Auschwitz, for example, happened under brilliant blue skies some of the time. The distancing and historicizing effect of black and white makes it seem like something from another era and not mid century.
On the other hand, I find a lot of these colorized pictures actually are done (unconsciously I assume) to look like faded colour photos from the past. This is super interesting in a lot of ways but doesn’t necessarily provide a more “realistic” idea of what the world or its people were like - rather a kind of updated sepia tone simulacrum of the past.
posted by Rumple at 3:12 PM on June 17, 2018
On the other hand, I find a lot of these colorized pictures actually are done (unconsciously I assume) to look like faded colour photos from the past. This is super interesting in a lot of ways but doesn’t necessarily provide a more “realistic” idea of what the world or its people were like - rather a kind of updated sepia tone simulacrum of the past.
posted by Rumple at 3:12 PM on June 17, 2018
You acclimatize people to pictures that have been doctored like this, what happens when they run into people in real life who look genuinely poor - that empathy is going to disappear.
I'm not convinced that the condescension involved in making it deliberately ugly, assuming that no poor people could have possibly traded for a headscarf in a color that looked good, or had a nicer shirt from some more prosperous patch, etc., Is much better.
posted by tavella at 4:17 PM on June 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
I'm not convinced that the condescension involved in making it deliberately ugly, assuming that no poor people could have possibly traded for a headscarf in a color that looked good, or had a nicer shirt from some more prosperous patch, etc., Is much better.
posted by tavella at 4:17 PM on June 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
I’m a special collections librarian, so I have ambivalent feelings about this. There’s no question that colorized photos have a more powerful impact and connection for a modern audience, and that’s valuable, but ultimately they are fakery, and I worry they will drive out the real thing in the public consciousness.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:50 PM on June 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:50 PM on June 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
"but ultimately they are fakery"
Really? What makes the colorized version more fake than the original black and white ones? I get that there will be educated guesses on which colors to use in making these colorizations, but the original photographs were also the product of the original photographer's heavy editorial control, in what they chose to include in the frame, what kind of exposure to use, what kind of dark room manipulation to apply afterwards, etc. The photograph is what the photographer chose to present; it's not some sacrosanct, ultimate version of reality we need to slavishly uphold. By all means the original version should be preserved, but these new versions are not necessarily inferior.
posted by Pantalaimon at 6:59 PM on June 17, 2018 [9 favorites]
Really? What makes the colorized version more fake than the original black and white ones? I get that there will be educated guesses on which colors to use in making these colorizations, but the original photographs were also the product of the original photographer's heavy editorial control, in what they chose to include in the frame, what kind of exposure to use, what kind of dark room manipulation to apply afterwards, etc. The photograph is what the photographer chose to present; it's not some sacrosanct, ultimate version of reality we need to slavishly uphold. By all means the original version should be preserved, but these new versions are not necessarily inferior.
posted by Pantalaimon at 6:59 PM on June 17, 2018 [9 favorites]
Of these colourists I'm only familiar with Marina (I follow her on facebook), and at least in her Faces of Auschwitz project I feel confident in the amount of research and fact checking in the colourisations.
posted by womb of things to be and tomb of things that were at 8:08 PM on June 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
“Faces of Auschwitz” is a collaboration between the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, a Brazilian photo colorization specialist Marina Amaral, and a dedicated team of academics, journalists and volunteers. The goal of the project is to honor the memory and lives of Auschwitz-Birkenau prisoners by colorizing registration photographs culled from the museum’s archive and sharing individual stories of those whose faces were photographed. By bringing color to the original black and white registration photos and telling prisoners’ stories, “Faces of Auschwitz” commemorates the memory of those who were murdered in the name of bigotry and hate. It acts as both a memorial to their passing and a warning to the world at a time when the memory of the Holocaust becomes increasingly abstract and remote.My favourite of Marina's works are probably the colourisations she does for old family photos. It's really nice to see people getting excited and emotional about seeing a photo of a relative who has for a long time only existed in colour in their memories, or the sudden closing of cognitive and emotional distance between them and relatives they didn't personally know.
posted by womb of things to be and tomb of things that were at 8:08 PM on June 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Really? What makes the colorized version more fake than the original black and white ones?
For me, the issue revolves less around the idea of "fake" relative to an abstract view of photographs as a whole and more around the shift of context between the photo from its time and "reimagined" in our own. The context of the photo in its own time still matters to me, so even accepting photographers do frame and sometimes manipulate images and settings, that manipulation has its own history that has some meaning to it that I do worry get minimized in further manipulation to suit the tastes of a later age.
That isn't to day the counter argument for the more intense emotional connection doesn't have its own weight and that colorization is inherently bad in all cases or that people shouldn't be able to like and appreciate things in new ways, just that treating the past as a thing that needs to be updated to modern tastes carries problems as well as potential benefits. "Nowism" always exerts a strong pull, but it feels like that's even more true today than ever with the seemingly endless attempts to manipulate nostalgia in popular culture.
A lot of these photos are impressively redone and some do seem to provide more benefit than harm, but that shouldn't then make any or all like revisions equally acceptable. It feels to me like this is something that needs to be looked at on a case by case basis and not just accepted as good practice overall.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:43 AM on June 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
For me, the issue revolves less around the idea of "fake" relative to an abstract view of photographs as a whole and more around the shift of context between the photo from its time and "reimagined" in our own. The context of the photo in its own time still matters to me, so even accepting photographers do frame and sometimes manipulate images and settings, that manipulation has its own history that has some meaning to it that I do worry get minimized in further manipulation to suit the tastes of a later age.
That isn't to day the counter argument for the more intense emotional connection doesn't have its own weight and that colorization is inherently bad in all cases or that people shouldn't be able to like and appreciate things in new ways, just that treating the past as a thing that needs to be updated to modern tastes carries problems as well as potential benefits. "Nowism" always exerts a strong pull, but it feels like that's even more true today than ever with the seemingly endless attempts to manipulate nostalgia in popular culture.
A lot of these photos are impressively redone and some do seem to provide more benefit than harm, but that shouldn't then make any or all like revisions equally acceptable. It feels to me like this is something that needs to be looked at on a case by case basis and not just accepted as good practice overall.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:43 AM on June 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
If you want more of this, there was another collection of colourised photos published last year, "The Paper Time Machine", covering the years between 1897 and 1949.
(Disclosure: I was an original backer of the book when it was being funded though Unbound )
posted by garrett at 1:39 AM on June 18, 2018
(Disclosure: I was an original backer of the book when it was being funded though Unbound )
posted by garrett at 1:39 AM on June 18, 2018
I guess that I'm in the minority here but I hate these so much. I really despise the idea that black and white photography is somehow less and needs to be "fixed" by colorizing it.
posted by octothorpe at 4:26 AM on June 18, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 4:26 AM on June 18, 2018 [6 favorites]
I think colorization that tends to erase someone's identity (like Florence Owen Thompson with blue eyes) is really problematic, but other than that this seems like a great project. It's so easy to see the past as a fundamentally different place, especially when every rendering of it is itself marked as an obvious historical artifact.
I do think that, although Marina's work is really excellent, many of the others in the subreddit still look "colorized" -- the colors look too saturated, or too evenly colored, or something. (I assume the difficulty I have in defining why they look off is an indication of how difficult the whole process is, so tons of respect for all this work.)
posted by bjrubble at 10:45 AM on June 18, 2018
I do think that, although Marina's work is really excellent, many of the others in the subreddit still look "colorized" -- the colors look too saturated, or too evenly colored, or something. (I assume the difficulty I have in defining why they look off is an indication of how difficult the whole process is, so tons of respect for all this work.)
posted by bjrubble at 10:45 AM on June 18, 2018
""but ultimately they are fakery"
All photography is fakery. The world wasn't black and white back then, it didn't look or feel as depicted in the photographs. The lack of colour imparts it's own fakery onto the scenes, which can never possibly be anything but fakery anyway. It's a really absurd word to start using in this context. Doubly so when you remember you're not looking at a colourized photograph, you're looking at a monitor using light illusions to create something non-physical that can be perceived to look like an old photograph that's been colourized.
"I guess that I'm in the minority here but I hate these so much. I really despise the idea that black and white photography is somehow less and needs to be "fixed" by colorizing it."
In times where colour photography wasn't available or widely possible, it might be that the photographer's didn't have a choice. B&W photography has it's uses and strengths, but there's nothing inherently sacred about old photos where the photographer had no choice.
I don't see people complaining about looking at art on instagram or the web despite it sometimes being worse than having not seen that art at all, it just seems arbitrary to take issue with old photos being modified, for colour purposes or any other.
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:17 PM on June 18, 2018 [3 favorites]
All photography is fakery. The world wasn't black and white back then, it didn't look or feel as depicted in the photographs. The lack of colour imparts it's own fakery onto the scenes, which can never possibly be anything but fakery anyway. It's a really absurd word to start using in this context. Doubly so when you remember you're not looking at a colourized photograph, you're looking at a monitor using light illusions to create something non-physical that can be perceived to look like an old photograph that's been colourized.
"I guess that I'm in the minority here but I hate these so much. I really despise the idea that black and white photography is somehow less and needs to be "fixed" by colorizing it."
In times where colour photography wasn't available or widely possible, it might be that the photographer's didn't have a choice. B&W photography has it's uses and strengths, but there's nothing inherently sacred about old photos where the photographer had no choice.
I don't see people complaining about looking at art on instagram or the web despite it sometimes being worse than having not seen that art at all, it just seems arbitrary to take issue with old photos being modified, for colour purposes or any other.
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:17 PM on June 18, 2018 [3 favorites]
there's nothing inherently sacred about old photos where the photographer had no choice.
Apart from the whole “was there and took the picture” thing.
I remain unconvinced anybody not moved by dust bowl pictures in black and white is going to have a sudden empathetic epiphany in color.
posted by Celsius1414 at 1:57 PM on June 18, 2018
Apart from the whole “was there and took the picture” thing.
I remain unconvinced anybody not moved by dust bowl pictures in black and white is going to have a sudden empathetic epiphany in color.
posted by Celsius1414 at 1:57 PM on June 18, 2018
Wow! Next are they going to work on the black-and-white and various sepia photos that your friend keeps posting on Facebook in an attempt to look artistic? (You know who I'm talking about!)
posted by Metro Gnome at 12:27 AM on June 19, 2018
posted by Metro Gnome at 12:27 AM on June 19, 2018
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