Trust me, grandson / The war was in color.
July 4, 2018 11:14 AM   Subscribe

The war was in color. Most of the photographs from WWI are black and white because color photography was in its infancy. This article links to four sources of color photographs, although many images are on more than one site. Content warning: while most images are not graphic, a few are. The post title is from the poem briefly quoted in the article.
posted by angiep (11 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
eeeee, fistbump for the Carbon Leaf reference!
posted by sciatrix at 11:23 AM on July 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


Color images from WWI are so powerful.
posted by doctornemo at 11:47 AM on July 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


What’s with those first four photos in the link, why do they look like they were almost shot with a tilt-shift lens, especially the second photo? They are fantastic, I wish I could replicate the same qualities.
posted by gucci mane at 11:53 AM on July 4, 2018


Oh wait, were they probably shot with slide film, would that be why?
posted by gucci mane at 11:55 AM on July 4, 2018


I would think they were probably shot with a large format bellows camera, and early color film must have been incredibly slow, necessitating a wide aperture and shallow depth of field.
posted by TedW at 12:21 PM on July 4, 2018 [5 favorites]


And I imagine wartime photogs didn't use flashes, which would have enabled them to stop the aperture down for more depth of field, but also be shot by snipers.
posted by rhizome at 12:24 PM on July 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


Argh, I just got my hands on a medium format Hasselblad, now I need to upgrade again?!
posted by gucci mane at 12:36 PM on July 4, 2018


Argh, I just got my hands on a medium format Hasselblad, now I need to upgrade again?!

If you want to, you can get one of these. Lenses and film backs extra.
posted by TedW at 1:05 PM on July 4, 2018



I would think they were probably shot with a large format bellows camera, and early color film must have been incredibly slow, necessitating a wide aperture and shallow depth of field.

This. Autochrome plates were really slow, probably in the low single digits for an ISO rating. It's impresive how sharp these are considering how long the exposures had to be.
posted by octothorpe at 1:15 PM on July 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


The Carbon Leaf song mentioned: The War Was In Color.
posted by hippybear at 1:20 PM on July 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


All talking about photo gear aside, these are really impressive. As an amateur photographer I don’t personally feel that color is always more moving than black and white, but definitely appreciate the dimension it adds. Although the photos showing the daily lives of soldiers and civilians were impressive, the third photo in this link, showing the aftermath of the mines of Messines, really struck me. From Wikipedia: “The evening before the attack, General Sir Charles Harington, Chief of Staff of the Second Army (General Sir Herbert Plumer), remarked to the press, "Gentlemen, I don’t know whether we are going to make history tomorrow, but at any rate we shall change geography".” But apparently amidst the destruction of that war, it didn’t stand out. Reminds me of the Battle of the Crater in the slaver’s rebellion here in the United States.
posted by TedW at 1:26 PM on July 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


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