Black and white photos often make events and moments in recent history feel older than they really are. As a result, we usually don’t relate to them as we do with a photo that is in color. So what happens when you take old black and white photographs, and colorize them? Take a look at these photographs and see if you feel any different about them…
1. Abandoned Boy Holding a Stuffed Toy Animal. London 1945
2. Albert Einstein, Summer 1939 Nassau Point, Long Island, NY
3. Young Boy in Baltimore Slum Area, July 1938
4. Elizabeth Taylor – Giant (1956 film)
5. Hindenburg Disaster – May 6, 1937
6. Japanese Archers, circa 1860
7. View from Capitol in Nashville, Tennessee During the Civil War, 1864
8. Unemployed Lumber Worker, circa 1939
9. Auto Wreck in Washington D.C, 1921
10. Big Jay McNeely Driving the Crowd at the Olympic Auditorium into a Frenzy, Los Angeles, 1953
11. W.H. Murphy and his Associate Demonstrating their Bulletproof Vest on October 13, 1923
12. Audrey Hepburn
13. ‘Old Gold’, Country Store, 1939
14. Joseph Goebbels Scowling at Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt after Finding out he’s Jewish, 1933
15. Nikola Tesla, 1893
16. British Troops Cheerfully Board their Train for the First Stage of their Trip to the Western Front – England, September 20, 1939
17. Oscar II, King of Sweden and Norway, 1880
18. Walt Whitman, 1887
19. Mark Twain in the Garden, circa 1900
20. Charlie Chaplin at the Age of 27, 1916
21. Women Delivering Ice, 1918
22. Times Square, 1947
23. Portrait Used to Design the Penny. President Lincoln Meets General McClellan – Antietam, Maryland ca September 1862
24. Marilyn Monroe, 1957
25. Newspaper boy Ned Parfett sells copies of the evening paper bearing news of Titanic’s sinking the night before. (April 16, 1912)
26. Easter Eggs for Hitler, c 1944-1945
27. Sergeant George Camblair practicing with a gas mask in a smokescreen – Fort Belvoir, Virginia, 1942
28. Helen Keller meeting Charlie Chaplin in 1919
29. Painting WWII Propaganda Posters, Port Washington, New York – 8 July 1942
30. Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge ca 1935
31. Louis Armstrong practicing in his dressing room, ca 1946
32. Broadway at the United States Hotel Saratoga Springs, N.Y. ca 1900-1915
33. “The Tall Cowboy”, Ralph E. Madsen with Senator Morris Sheppard, 1919
34. Dancers of the National American Ballet, 20 August 1924
35. Theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, 1921
36. Otto Frank, Anne Frank’s father and the only surviving member of the Frank family revisiting the attic they spent the war in, 3 May 1960
37. Young Woman with Umbrella – Louisiana, 1937
38. Crowded Bunks in the Prison Camp at Buchenwald, April 16, 1945
39. Peatwy Tuck of the Meskwahki, 1898
40. Boys after buying Easter flowers in Union Square, New York, April 1908
It’s incredible how much more we can relate to photographs once they are presented in color. These moments in the past go from being a distant memory, to one that we can relate to on a much deeper and more personal level.