Seeing these historical photographs brought back to life will change the way you look at history forever. It’s hard to get a clear picture of what it was like before colour cameras were invented, but with the help of some skilful and very patient people we get to enjoy the past in glorious colour.
The process of colourising black and white film or photographs has always been a lengthy one, however digital tools such as Photoshop have got some way to helping speedy the process up. You can learn more about the process here.
If you like these you should check out Reddit’s r/ColorizedHistory which has lots of colourised photos from the past.
1. Abraham Lincoln, February, 1865.
2. July 3, 1899. Boxing match aboard the U.S.S. New York.
3. Yvonne and Alexander Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, aged 12 and 13 take a drink and smoke on yacht near Majorca.
4. An Ojibwe Native American spearfishing, Minnesota, 1908.
5. Adolf Hitler, Along with Mussolini’s son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano (to Hitler’s right), and Joachim von Ribbentrop, attend a NSDAP (Nazi Party) rally, some time around the 1930s.
6. Soldiers wearing gas masks while peeling onions at Tobruk, October 15, 1941.
7. Captain Walter “Waddy” Young and his crew pose in front of their caricatures on their B-29 Superfortress, November 24, 1944.
8. British tattoo artist George Burchett, the “King of Tattooists”, ca 1930.
9. Post officers show off their brand-new “Autopeds” scooters, Washington, D.C., 1917.
10. Performer Sarah Vaughan, ca 1946.
11. Duck Dynasty, c.1926.
12. Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia, sling cart used in removing captured artillery during the American Civil War, ca. 1865.
13. A mother helps her child off of a trolley on a Broadway in New York City, July 1913.
14. A man takes a drink at a ‘Colored’ water cooler in streetcar terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahom” ca. July 1939.
15. Future President John F. Kennedy just after his graduation from Harvard, in the summer of 1940.
16. People standing in Times Square on D-Day, 1944.
17. Captain Robert Hugo Dunlap, US Marine Corps Reserve, 1st Battalion, 26th Marines, 5th Marine Division. Iwo Jima 20-21st February 1945.
18. Children watch as their neighborhood is bombed in Minsk, Belorussia. The bombing was part of Operation Barbarossa. June, 1941.
19. Stalin and Churchill in Livadia Palace during the Yalta Conference, February 1945.
20. Louis and Lucille Armstrong at the Sphinx, January 28, 1961.
h/t Boredpanda, Reddit
