Ohmyeffingod

No. Just...no.

By Ctein

Okay, everybody, take a deep breath and sit back in your chairs. This is going to be a MOAR* of epic dimension.

Those of you who have been reading me over the years know that my tastes in photography are extremely broad. (Those who haven't? Well, I'm telling you now.) I like most all photography. The little photography that I don't like, I recognize is simply not to my taste, or that I am not the intended audience. I don't set myself up as an arbiter of what is or isn't "right and proper" photography, and I am mildly offended when others do. I wrote a column some years back called "Stifling Your Inner Yahoo" that I think should be required reading for anyone who has ever been inclined to dismiss art they don't understand or don't appreciate as worthwhile.

Having said that...

Even. I. Have. My. Limits.

This blows past them and leaves them in shards and shambles.

Caution—while all these photos are safe for work, they are not safe for your sanity nor peace of mind. You've been warned. See "A Vibrant Past: Colorizing the Archives of History" at Time LightBox. 

I am appalled. Maybe beyond appalled. Do look through the entire sequence—it just gets worse and worse, until it climaxes in a finale so stunning in its tastelessness that it is almost beyond description. In fact, I won't describe it. I'll let you have the pleasure (I am likely misusing this word) of discovering it yourself.

Hand-tinting of black-and-white photographs was common well into the twentieth century, especially for portraiture. These aren't tinted, they're atrociously colorized. Lest it be argued that this is only a matter of degree, that would be like arguing that stage makeup is no different in import and effect than putting on a clown face. Quantity counts towards quality: Vitamin A is necessary for life; an excess will kill you (avoid the polar bear liver entrée).

When I looked at the nineteenth century photographs, I thought they exhibited considerable hubris to be guessing at colors on which we had no record. It was beyond unlikely to me that Lincoln was anywhere as pink faced and pasty as in photograph #3, but I figured there was probably some record of him having blue eyes, although the degree and kind of blueness was a stretch.

Well, no. Here is Lincoln's own description of himself, in his 1859 biography: "...I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes..." (emphases mine).

It took me less than 30 seconds with Google to get to this information. The retoucher didn't even do the most basic research; this pink, blue-eyed Lincoln isn't artistic license in the absence of facts. It's just plain wrong.

What surprised me, though, was that I hated the mid-20th century colorizations even more. In good part I think that's because by then, black-and-white photography had become a medium that photographers had internalized, so lighting and composition were elements used much more effectively. A substantial part of what makes those news photographs so memorable is that they are inherently great photographs, and would be even if the subjects and events had been entirely mundane (as the bread line under the billboard is).

The colorizer has done such an awful artistic job that she has destroyed that. I doubt this could be done well, but she did it badly; her results are truly ineptly composed as color photographs. I'm impressed that the colorizer could have such technical skill and such an utterly lousy eye for photography (this is not the positive kind of impression). The Times Square kiss photograph becomes a jumbled unfocused mess. Ditto the burning monk, and the Vietnam murder. These make Ted Turner's colorizing of old black-and-white films, arguably a capital offense, look like high art.

The freshly-scrubbed migrant mother seems, well, unlikely, and diminishes the horror and despair of the situation that's conveyed in the original. The billboard and breadline photograph is simply screwed up; now the viewer's eye focuses on the billboard rather than the breadline.

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

The least visually offensive is probably the Hitchcock portrait. It merely looks like a mediocre job of hand-tinting. Which doesn't make it at all better than the original, but it doesn't make me want to tear my eyeballs out.

I have avoided mentioning the colorizer's name, although the article features her. This is not because I am genteelly trying to avoid a direct attack. It's because I consider this work to be so abominable that I do not want to give her one bit of free publicity. Clueless and visually "tone deaf" as she may be, I am only half so annoyed at her as I am with the editors at Time-Life, who somehow fell into the psychotic delusion that it would actually be a good idea to encourage, commission, and promote this work.

Any number of suitable paired punishments come to mind for their transgressions:

Tarring and feathering.

Drawing and quartering.

Torches and pitchforks.

Take your choice; you can pick one or all. Just remember that it's important to get them in the right order.

Next week I will return to much, much more pleasant topics, I assure you.

Ctein

Note: superstorm Sandy permitting, I'll be on a plane to Toronto for two weeks starting today; if it turns out that I don't respond to your comments (of which I'm sure there will be many) promptly...or at all...it'll be from lack of connectivity, not appreciation.

*Mother Of All Rants

Ctein draws and quarters on TOP on Wednesdays.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Morgan Consigny: "If you don't laugh, you'll cry."

The Lazy Aussie: "Is it a worse niche than HDR Street?"

cb: "It nicely proves that fancy postproduction can destroy every image."

Phillip E: "My godfather, Tony Maston, used to hand colour portraits in his work as a commercial photographer in the middle part of the twentieth century, so I appreciate that colouring black and white photographs has its place. That said: the colour versions shown juxtaposed with the originals in Ctein's link make the strongest possible case for the often superior emotional power of monochrome! (If one were needed.)"

fjf: "Is there any word on when Frank's The Americans will be reprinted using this technique?"

Mike responds: I know you're joking, but that comment actually shocked me when I read it, viscerally.

Paul: "Erm...I thought they were kind of interesting and reasonably well done. Not life changing either way."

Geoff Wittig: "Colorizing Ann Frank? Seriously? Simply beyond belief, a sign of smarmy corporate sugar-coating that has gone beyond the bounds of normal bad taste and malignant 'Disney-fication' into an entirely new realm of cultural whitewashing. What's next? Colorized Auschwitz? A smiling, avuncular colorized Hitler? Poking my mind's eye out with a fork here."

Martin: "I'm not bothered by these at all. In fact, I find it quite an interesting exercise, particularly so with photographs of pre-20th century figures. Colourising these images, regardless of how well you judge them to have been executed, somehow brings makes the figures and incidents more real. Lincoln lived not in a black and white, sepia toned world, but one filled with the same vibrancy of colours as the one we live in now. However, I have considerably more sympathy for your objection if you view the colourisation of these photographs as somehow vandalising a piece of art. But as an exercise in shifting one's perspective on the past, I rather like them."

Peter Cameron: "I wish I'd heeded the warning. I've now had my fill of horror for this Halloween."

Craig: "Some of these pictures don't look particularly bad, but not a single one of them actually improves the original in any way, so what's the point?

"One detail I find interesting is that the 'art' (if that's the word) of colorizing doesn't seem to have progressed at all in the 30 years since Ted Turner started applying his 'goddamn Crayolas' (as Orson Welles put it) to movies in the 1980s. Back then, I noticed that colorized movies always looked fake. Every leaf was the exact same shade of green, every Caucasian had exactly the same shade of skin, and so on. It always looked very lazy and unimaginative. And these pictures from Time show exactly the same defects.

"Time has never been a particularly high-class publication, but they did at least commit the occasional act of good photojournalism. This collection of vandalized historical images, little better than painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa, is a blight on even their lame record."

Roger Moore: "Maybe you 'hated the mid-20th century colorizations even more' because color processes were already available by then. The Lincoln portraits were black and white by necessity. Lincoln, who knew the political value of a good photograph, probably would have wanted them to be in color had it been practical. The 20th Century documentary and news photographers had access to color film and could have been using it if they had wanted. Working in black-and-white was a decision for them, so colorizing their photographs is a much more serious attack on their artistic integrity."

Bill Bresler: "I'm taking this one step further. I'm instagramming her work:

robert e (partial comment): "Ted Turner and the colorization fad of the '80s is a more ambiguous case for me. Tasteless and shocking as it was, so much good came out of it that I can't muster up any of the outrage I felt at the time.

"Previously neglected prints and negatives were carefully restored, copied and preserved in preparation for those colorizing projects (and Turner wasn't the only one, just the most prominent). Much historical research was done on the productions. The controversy, inflamed by Turner's mischievous public remarks and irreverent attitude, led to the National Film Preservation Act, and to landmark court judgements.

"(Unfortunately, none of this could stop a director from mutilating his own property, like a certain trilogy of science fiction fantasy epics.)

"Perhaps not least, the controversy attracted new audiences to these old classics and raised public awareness about the existence and precarious state of a cultural legacy.

"Turner wasn't stupid. He likely foresaw that any controversy and publicity around colorization would benefit his TV station, that the promise of profit would actually benefit movie archives, some of which he owned and some that he wished to acquire. Whether he anticipated it or not, the publicity also helped prime TV audiences for a cable channel dedicated to the appreciation of cinema classics as they were intended to be seen. The Turner Classic Movies channel's mission statement was all about original artistic intent, and even specified 'non-colorized.'"

Bill Tyler: "There's a huge bit of cognitive dissonance here. These are mostly news photos. Time is ostensibly a news organization. But any contemporary news photographer who did this kind of photo manipulation would be fired."

Dave Reichert: "There are times when color adds to a photograph, and lack of color diminishes it.

"On Saturday, July 18, 1970, I was in Times Square, waiting to get together with a girl I had met at summer camp a couple of weeks earlier. Not twenty feet away from me, a fellow carrying two cans stopped, mumbled something to the effect of 'That's enough,' and proceeded to pour the contents of those cans on himself. Then he lit a match.

"I was was 14 years old at the time, and though I've probably seen Malcolm Browne's picture of the burning monk dozens of times over the past forty-some-odd years, I never connected with it on an emotional level until I saw the colorized version.

"Black and white separates a documentary image from the physical reality that it's intended to represent. Sometimes that separation allows an image to transcend its specific, pedestrian origins and rise to become a more meaningful representation of a universal condition—the Eisenstaedt and Bourke-White photos referenced are good examples of this. Other times, that separation can strip an image of some of its literal reality—for me, Browne's burning monk is a clear example of a(n iconic) photo that's less effective than it could be, due to its lack of color."

Comments

[Deaconmacmillan]

oh my.

[Nick]

Ted, not Tim, Turner.

Not that this detracts from the quality of the rant...

[Mike Johnston]

Oops. Thanks Nick. Fixed now.

Mike

[Moose]

It just doesn't matter.

If folks like them, then your opinion-Judgement means nothing.

If folks don't like them, they will sink without a trace to mark their passing - other than your rant.

Moose

[Markus Spring]

Brave I was. I looked at it until Lange's 'Migrant Mother'. Then I *had* to stop, just to avoid further damage to my brain.

I am a bit at a loss, why TIME considered this worthy of comissioning and publishing. For me it's like pouring dressing from a tank over everything b&w to get a broader audience for it. Nothing against dressing, and salad without it is hard to swallow, but a uniform sauce over everything just destroys your taste buds. But just look at the fast food culture all over the world: it's definitely what attracts masses of paying customers. And I see this in line with all those "-a-matic" tools, which invite to be used indifferently and can become a true pest.

To think a bit further: photoshop already can do "intelligent" things in replacing image parts. I bet there are tests running already with automatic colorizers that by far outclass even the worst of the work shown in this seriens.

[Alex]

Like today's food: sugar-laden and full of synthetic aroma for all those cauterized taste-buds.

[Marek Fogiel]

This is as bad, no less, no more, as most of modern art. I see no major difference between this job and what Warhol did. If a couple of art critics will acclaim the "retoucher" as next Damien Hirst, and a blue eyed Lincoln will sell at Christies for 1.000.000 USD, then you will have another "nouvelle vague" on people's lips for some time.
Art has to be authentic, and it has to stand on its own.
Ciao
Marek

[Dan Rosenthal]

C'mon. This is very much setting yourself up as an arbiter of what is and isn't right in photography... I agree these colourised images suck the soul out of some of originals. Aside from historical inaccuracies - which is indeed deplorable - some are well executed and interesting. The Lincoln images are a bit of fun. Pity the colourist didn't do due diligence in accuracy. As an accompaniment to an article, they are fine. The more political and historically flammable (sorry) images should, indeed have been left alone. The main reason for this is not because they are good or bad (though they are indeed bad and in bad taste) but rather because the internet so quickly forgets. Soon image searches will have people convinced the originals were in colour and the B&W 'versions' are photoshopped. Oh dear...

[David Anderson]

She took those beautiful colour photos and ruined them by making them look artificially old and sepia toned.

[Mandeno Moments]

This makes Madame Tussauds look tasteful, and that's a first.

[Roger Bradbury]

Oh, it's amazing what you can do with technology. It doesn't mean that you should do it.

Most of it I just find a bit irritating, but the two pictures of men at or very near the point of death are just tasteless and disrespectful.

Not impressed.

[Jim]

While colorized old photos do not suit my taste, I really don't have an opinion on these.

History was never black and white, and each remembering changes reality.

[David Bennett]

For me, the colours did not make any of the photos stronger, but the Hitchcock was interesting.

However, they brought home to me that photos that I associate with terrible events (migrant mother / Anne Frank) are made cheerier by colourising them - and that is at odds with the feelings I have from the photos.

À chacun son goût and you start by declaring that what you are saying is what you think - according to your taste. But then you go on to make general declarations about why the prints are bad.

That's not a rant about something not being to your taste; it's a slamming, damning critique.

On reading this, the person who colourised the photos would probably stop up the windows, disconnect the phone, and go to bed to recover.

How does such a harsh criticism benefit people who read this column and might - in some future post be held back from submitting one of their own photos, as they were able to in November last year?

An atmosphere where someone can be targeted like you did engenders fear - and I do not think that is a nurturing atmosphere for any aspiring artists.

Here's a link to the The Five Finalists from TOP contributors last November.

[Phillip E]

My godfather, Tony Maston, used to hand colour portraits in his work as a commercial photographer in the middle part of the twentieth century, so I appreciate that colouring black and white photographs has its place. That said: the colour versions shown juxtaposed with the originals in Ctein's link make the strongest possible case for the often superior emotional power of monochrome! (If one were needed.)

[Jack]

Is it unforgiveable to say that I quite like the "American Way of Life" version ... ?

And: "The least visually offensive is probably the Hitchcock portrait." Well, that's the one that jars me the most - just because it is so obviously designed to be theatrically (or perhaps cinematically) sinister looking - the photographer (and of course Hitch too) knew exactly what they were after, and the effect only really works in black and white!

[Andrea]

Beside the bad executed work, I found the buddhist monk and the Vietnamese murder an excellent example of bad taste and insensibility. And I consider my skin quite thick...

[Wells_dc]

Poor work or not, she's hardly the first.
On the subject of colorization, I like the concept if not always the product because it challenges me to imagine the world as it really was--not black and white. I love b&w photography as art, and often appreciate the truths it reveals. But in revealing some truths it often omits others.
On the Lincoln portrait, there have been other colorizers, of course. A recent author devoted an entire book to coloring Lincoln: "Bryan Eaton's colorization of the Lincoln photographs stands as an excellent example of an 'a-ha!' moment of invention. We see his work and say to ourselves, 'Why didn't someone think of doing this sooner?' But no one had... I applaud his technical prowess, his organizational acumen, and his artistic aplomb in bringing Abraham Lincoln's immemorial visage into the 21st century. The book is a substantial contribution to the history of photography, of colorization, and of Lincoln iconography." (James Cornelius, Ph.D. Curator, Lincoln Collection, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library) (from Amazon)

[beuler]

It is horrendous. Someone has sprayed graffiti all over the historical record. Lets hope it can be removed without irreversible damage. I was laughing util I saw Migrant Mother and was no longer able to follow Morgan Consigny's advice.

[Mark Roberts]

It's the photographic equivalent of Kenny G dubbing his lame sax riffs over Louis Armstrong recordings. And I share Pat Metheny's opinion on both: http://www.jazzoasis.com/methenyonkennyg.htm

[Peter Bowers]

Toronto? How about we organize a meet-up for your Canadian fans (like me)?

[MarkB]

I just threw up a little in the back of my throat...

Unlike Moose, I believe that everyone's opinion means something, and that sharing your opinion, along with pointing something like this out for others to form their own opinions, is a worthy endeavour.

[Frank]

Great, you fell for the hook to talk up Lincoln just in time to market another myth-making blockbuster for-profit movie. Why do we have to revere a war-mongering racist President responsible for destroying half the country and killing hundreds of thousands?

The colorizations are awful too, just not to the same degree as mythologizing a mass-murderer as a national hero.

[Tim]

*shrug*.

Yes Lincoln's skin-tone is probably off. Yes the mapping of tones between colour and black&white gives different emphasis to different areas, facilitating easier separation of objects in the scene or not.

But then again, she has painters in her family. Do you think Signora Gherardini was really #e9c662 (colour sampled from wikipedia image)? Does it matter? If the purpose of the original portraits was documentary not artistic, then there's little validity jumping on one's high-horse about artistic integrity of changing it after the fact. One has to be careful how much one's view of history is tainted by some photographer's choice of black&white translation - adding colour is a wakeup call against sentimentality.

I quite like the sailor-snog one. The others, yeah, *shrug*.

[HT]

Growl! Sacred cows are sacred for a reason, my friends.

[Ben Marks]

Just to be contrary (this is the Internet, after all), let me pose a devil's advocate position: the underlying photographs are some of the most important that I know of (exc. Hitchcock). If the exercise introduces folks to these images for the first time, well at least they are becoming more literate.

I honestly could not tell just looking at the pictures whether the colorization effort was intended to be ironically bad quality (as in; a dig at Ted Turner) or whether it was really a "best effort" sort of thing. The most appropriate response, perhaps:

Quote from Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Waterson:

Calvin: Dad, how come old photographs are always in black and white? Didn't they have color film back then?

Calvin's Dad: Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs ARE in color. It's just that the world WAS in black and white then.

Calvin: Really?

Calvin's Dad: Yep. The world didn't turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.

[bill]

Sad. Inline with the overprocessed crap proliferating all to much of contemporary imagery today.

Did a job recently. Client wanted color matched, so I took the time and did. Client rejected the job. After boosting saturation, changing the color balance, adding contrast etc. the client then deemed the job to be "natural and accurate". The reference MacBeth chart looked like a satire.

DOH. We can't even have Black and White Black and White anymore.

[MJFerron]

A colorized Migrant Mother? I draw my sword.

[Tim Auger]

Abe's wearing make-up

[Chuck Ulm]

AWFUL! Like fingernails on a chalkboard.

[Mike Plews]

Brain hurts

[dan]

Beyond the asthetically silly color job i find the choice of images baffling and wrong. Did we really need colorized verzions of burning monks and head shots? And lets leave Ann Frank alone. Her image turning up as a chair covering was just one of the recent, sad misuses of her memory.

[Dave]

Time Magazine has stolen something from me. I will not be able to look again at those iconic images without remembering this vile assault. So sad. It made me cry.

[Frank Minutillo]

I like to fool around with colorization of some of my own 35mm images from the sixties. But I consider it to be a separate thing from photography. It's a new medium. It shouldn't be done as a "photo-realistic" attempt to alter the original image. Colorization can and does make a new entity, combining the original image with something else.

None of the altered images in this essay do that.

[Bruno Menilli]

Hi I'm not intending to take sides - but I don't believe these were presented as an accurate depiction [ colour -wise ] of historic event, but as examples of someone's imagination.
As historic recordings they should not be altered in any way, but apart from that anything goes.
For me the only one that works is the 'bread line' shot, in which I think the billboard is the more important part [just] , emphasising and focusing on the propaganda, whilst showing the reality below.

Regards
Bruno

[Sarge]

Two questions:

1) Would the same onus apply, more or less, to monochroming digital color photos? (That is, a digital photographer who has no intention to shoot film monochroming his/her own photos in-camera or post.)

2) If one were to monochrome a color photograph that doesn't belong to him and claim credit for the B&W version, can he be sued by the owner of the original color photo?

[Reg Paley]

It seems to be the present world's need to 'see' EVERYTHING in colour. Our GB Sky channels are full of 'The *** in colour' using old film footage that would look far better in the original black and white that it was shot in. What's that saying we use now 'If it 'aint broke, don't fix it'!

[Flippistarchives.blogspot.com]

Appropriate punishment:

Boiled in Marshalls™ photo-oils.

[Alan]

Yes these images are over the top. A few things pop out in the accompanying article though. The "artist" has been colourizing since way back in 2011.... I get the impression this must be the daughter (grand-daughter?) of the editor... "Aww, isn't this cute, maybe we should print it out and put it on the 'fridge"

[MHMG]

Tasteless or not (Ok, totally in bad taste), but that's not what really rang the bell for me on this one. The editors of Time, by succumbing to "because we can" digital manipulation techniques, are simply doubling down on how far modern digital imaging has come in terms of blurring the boundaries between paintings and photographs. At least with these absurdly manipulated images, knowledgeable people really do understand what the source images were. And for those who aren't familiar with the originals, the amateurish colorizing combined with other obvious retouching is a dead give away that the color content is imaginary and not to be mistaken for real-wold color accuracy.

Yet every time I see a photographer cranking out totally over-the-top HDR imagery with artificially saturated colors and unreal tones like the human visual system would never render, or photoshopping multiple images into a fantasy montage, or stitching panoramas together for "my image has more resolution than yours" bragging rights, that's when I have to step back, take a deep breath, and remind myself why I fell in love with photography in the first place.

[gary]

Your rambling and, sometimes incoherent, rant against the art of colorization attacks my own sanity. Contrary to your opinion the colorizer's artistry is exceptional and in no way distracts or alters the composition, mood, or impact of the photograph original.

It's fine to offer constructive criticism, but this blog entry is just a series of negative attacks on something you obviously don't like.

[Dave]

I think these prove the maxim that just because one CAN do something, does not mean they should.

[Paul Glover]

The only redeeming feature is that they at least resisted the urge to run the portraits through one of those wretched skin-smoothing plug-ins which make humans look like wax mannequins.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

I'm actually not "appalled" which surprises me since I believe that colorization of b&w motion pictures should result in a life-sentence conviction.

But I actually found some of these to be well-done with more restraint than you'll normally get from a 22 year old (or, worse, a 60 year old!). Sure, some sideswipe kitsch. But many really do shine a new light on old images. In particular:

# 1 Lincoln at Antiedam is an interesting perspective.
#11 Lincoln portrait seems shockingly contemporary and casual!
#13 The famous Eisenstaedt kiss is, well, eye-catching but…I agree...eeeewwww! It never occured to me that tongue might be involved.
#17 Hitchcock portrait is fine. It looks like the 50's Kodachrome in color.
#21 Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother is interesting in color! Again, it looks like a Kodachrome palette.
#23 Margaret Bourke-White's "World's Highest Standard of Living" is also interesting rendered in color, although I do prefer the grim hopelessness of b&w for the image.

To understand your reaction, Ctein, I need only remember Ted Turner's former, and mercifully short-lived, campaign in the 1980's to colorize many of the most significant b&w films in his (then) newly-acquired film library. I was sickened when I heard of it.

But this is pure novelty that does not threaten the original works. The renderings add an interesting contemplative dimension for me although I prefer the original monochromes in all cases.

I find myself far more annoyed when I see someone take a lovely new image (of their own) and crush-and-juice the life out of it in search of some faux emotional legitimacy.

[John Holland]

Heed Ctein's warning! Don't look!

I chickened out as soon as I hit the candy-coloured Alfred Eisenstaedt photo. There are some things that, once seen, you cannot unsee. Like A. Lincoln rouged up as though he were being impersonated in a drag review by Paul Newman.

OK, I exaggerate, but ... feh.

[Peter]

"I'll be on a plane to Toronto for two weeks starting today;" Welcome to Toronto, Ctein. But if your plane takes two weeks to get here, you need to choose another airline. Enjoy your visit to our great city.'~)

[John Holland]

P.S. your mouseover caption on the Lincoln photo made me laugh out loud. At work. Thanks again, Ctein.

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

Well.

Someone's sacred cows have just been slain.

That said, I don't think it's necessarily the colourization that I ultimately found problematic (I was actually quite stricken by the portrait of Lincoln with elbow on desk), but it's the motivation.

The artist "began colorizing images in January 2011, when she was listening to the debut album by rock band Rage Against the Machine. The self-titled album’s cover art is a black-and-white picture of a self-immolating monk taken by AP photographer Malcolm Browne. “I thought the normally fiery flames looked so dull in black and white, so I…looked for a way to make them come alive,”

Dull? Is that all there is? A sugar relief for dullness? Bringing black and white to a normality? When so many of these photographs are also good work AS black and white? Oh, and who still listens to RATM in 2011 anyway? People who prefer to enforce normality, it seems! But I digress.

There is a certain school of historical research that believes in the most precise re-enactment of past events as an vital way of culling information about them. If you want to understand medieval people, try living in their conditions for a while. It's a form of "anthropological field study of the past" with all the biases that it also involves, and inherent limits.

With photographs, I can admit that when the point is trying to gather information about the past and reconstructing colours in order to have more, or better information, I can see the point.

The problem is that here it's just about being un-bored. Sheesh. I don't think Anne Frank's photo or Migrant Mother needs to be "less boring," and therein lies the sin. Other than that, it could have been harmless fun, of the "what if..." kind.

[Tony Rowlett]

I mostly agree with you, but I was surprised at how a few of them, particularly the one of South Vietnamese Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting Nguyen Van Lem, appeared exactly the same to me as the B&W versions, and had I not been told beforehand that these are colorized versions, I might not have immediately noticed. I think it's only a testament to the power of B&W in its ability to create color in the imagination.

[Dennis Ng]

if photo is image now and he could be just a vampire per a recent movie, why not blue eye ...

gave up long time ago to say what is real and what is not by using photos for other than news

[PWL]

Hey, this is America: schlock sells....

[toto]

Maybe it was the make-up and the blue contact lenses.

[Ri chard Newman]

For comparison, consider the "photomechanical" color reproduction of a classic Roman statue of Venus, published in Smithsonian Magazine (Nov.2012, p.13), based on detailed analysis of pigment fragments on the original statue. The Romans and Greeks painted their statues, and the white marble we see is the result of pigment loss. I'm curious as to how well others think this process works?

[Alan Fairley]

Beyond banal. Like taking ketchup to a four-star restaurant.

[Stan B.]

I don't see the drama here. They most certainly are not meant to replace the originals, and as much respect as I have for B&W (have been shooting nothing but for the last 30 yrs, these do give us a better idea of what the reality did look like (I don't think she did that bad a job- certainly no worse than some of the original hand tinters of their day).

Because of our familiarity with the medium, we often forget that B&W distorts reality like no other medium. A fun and/or forgettable exercise at worst.

[John Sparks]

Finally, a day that I'm actually glad that I'm colorblind!

[jb]

But you know, Ctein, it is Halloween.

I agree with you that the last photo is beyond horrible. Only a butterfly and rainbow are missing from the photo.

The photos from Vietnam and Tibet are equally monstrous.

Frankly, only a fundamentally immoral person is capable of such producing such work.

[Mike Johnston]

"Beside the bad executed work, I found the buddhist monk and the Vietnamese murder an excellent example of bad taste and insensibility. And I consider my skin quite thick..."

Andrea,
And not that infinitely touching surviving portrait of that poor doomed Jewish girl? I was joking with Ctein that I'm surprised the retoucher didn't give her blonde hair and blue eyes...(okay, that's in poor taste too).

Mike

[Nicholas Condon]

I made it to the end, but the burning monk was what really put it over the top. Yes, let's use an utterly horrifying image of the ultimate protest against an unjust war as a page in a coloring book.

I'd say I want brain bleach right now, but I kind of want to use this as a benchmark for tastelessness and ineptitude in the future.

[Ken N]

I'm thinking that the Hitchcock photograph would make a terrific dye transfer print.

[David Bateman]

I think Time is about to lose their printed mag, and need some junk to get people to pick it up, buy it or read it. Let's face it the online world is here now and newspapers and magazines need to really shock us to get attention.

[Bob Keefer]

I make and sell hand-colored black and white photographs online, so I actually have some slight grasp of the aesthetics of coloring.

Subtle is good. Loose and non-literal is good. The color can be an interesting counterpoint to the graphic structure of the original BW image.

All I can say about this work is, what were they thinking?

[Dean Silliman]

Your Inner Yahoo post implies that all art means something to someone (presumably, at least to the artist) and therefore that it should not be dismissed. Here, the 22 year old colorizing artist states “By colorizing, I watch the photos come alive, and suddenly the people feel more real and history becomes more tangible.”

How many monochrome images (or even movies) has a 22 year old seen these days on average? What does it mean that she connects with an artificial colorized picture but not the mono original? Or that Time recognizes this potential audience? Or that, at the same time and moving in the opposite direction, less-than-photorealistic Instagrams and intense post processing are all the rage?

[al from chgo]

Perhaps this will be of interest to some one. The Migrant Mother family made it California and the girls took care of their mother as she aged. The link below goes to a Tmblr page which contains photos of the mother and the girls taken in 1979..(and yes it is black and white)

www.tumblr.com/tagged/florence-owens-thompson

[kenneth voigt]

Me thinketh the gentleman doth complaineth too much

[Pak-Ming Wan]

For a moment there I thought it was Mike's article .. no .. no .. it's Ctein! On another note, isn't it funny that in my mind, there are many photos that I take where I think it might work better in B&W, but rarely in the other direction. I guess if you've taken a photo with B&W in mind, it's hard to back track ...

Pak

[Gunny]

I disagree.

[roni]

yes but you can do better b&w conversion with the colored files!

[Brent]

The saying, "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" fits well here.

[Jason]

What I don't understand is that some of the pictures look colorized to match the film stock of the day. A few had a Kodachrome look.

But then, what item really had the 'Velvia' look of the 80's and 90's?

[robert e]

I can only see the first slide in the slideshow, but that, and the description there, and here, is enough to make me cringe and shudder.

That it's actually TIME/LIFE doing this to its own legacy is astonishing, and may be the biggest outrage of all. The disdain for historical accuracy is just kicking us while we're down.

On the other hand, Ted Turner and the colorization fad of the 80's is a more ambiguous case for me. Tasteless and shocking as it was, so much good came out of it that I can't muster up any of the outrage I felt at the time.

Previously neglected prints and negatives were carefully restored, copied and preserved in preparation for those colorizing projects (and Turner wasn't the only one, just the most prominent). Much historical research was done on the productions. The controversy, inflamed by Turner's mischievous public remarks and irreverent attitude, led to the National Film Preservation Act, and to landmark court judgements.

(Unfortunately, none of this could stop a director from mutilating his own property, like a certain trilogy of science fiction fantasy epics.)

Perhaps not least, the controversy attracted new audiences to these old classics and raised public awareness about the existence and precarious state of a cultural legacy.

Turner wasn't stupid. He likely foresaw that any controversy and publicity around colorization would benefit his TV station, that the promise of profit would actually benefit movie archives, some of which he owned and some that he wished to acquire. Whether he anticipated it or not, the publicity also helped prime TV audiences for a cable channel dedicated to the appreciation of cinema classics as they were intended to be seen. The Turner Classic Movies channel's mission statement was all about original artistic intent, and even specified "non-colorized".

Sorry for the digression. This is all just to say that TIME's colorization project won't have any such benefits, or raise a fraction of the fuss, because it doesn't have anywhere near that kind of import. It's just a juvenile exercise. Especially so in this day and age, when so many kids have the means and ability to do this for themselves.

[Steve Jacob]

Hmm, colours are about as accurate as Velvia ;)

Since when did colour accuracy figure in art? Even Canon and Nikon can't agree on skin tones.

I agree not all of it was well chosen, but it's just an exercise, not a judgement. The fact that the emotional impact and focus changes simply makes the point, that monochrome and colour images have different emotional properties and context.

The fact that people find the burning monk more offensive in colour shows that in some contexts black and white is inadequate to the task. What is supposed to be not shocking about this picture?

[Mark Walker]

Stunningly trite and inappropriate colorisation. Does the colouriser want some recognition for a pop art take on such (largely) soulful mages. Play around with this in your own home but don't present them to the world, for Pete's sake. Do something original that has the power to hold the attention of generations of viewers, stop exploiting images, it ultimately devalues them in the perception - which can be varied - of what they represent. (This is all too easy).
Mark Walker.

[Dave Kee]

"Virginia Woolf is often depicted as a dreamy, effete snob, agonizing all day over a single adjective while sipping tea…." (Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune, November 2, 2008)"

From Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of effete.

[ctein]

Dear Peter,

This is not impossible. It would have to be some time next week Monday through Thursday. E-mail me: ctein@pobox.com.

No promises I'll have photos with me, though; getting artwork through customs can be a hassle.

pax / Ctein

[John Camp]

It's sometimes hard for people to understand that B&W doesn't automatically denote a handicap. Anne Frank needed B&W, because part of the allure of the photo is the very darkness of it -- there seems to be a foreboding there that simply doesn't exist in the color, "Hi, I'm graduating from middle school" version. The same is true of the migrant mother, and several of the others.

So what we have here is simply an exercise in bad taste. And there IS such a thing as bad taste -- and those people who don't see much wrong with this, well, I'm sorry.

And for those who think Ctein was too hard on the young colorist (we don't really know whether she's a photographer, but somehow, I doubt it), well, this is how young colorists learn to distinguish the useful from the purely stupid.

And finally, this has nothing to do with Andy Warhol or anything he was up to; nor does it have anything to do with modern art.

[Manuel]

I'd suggest adding lynching to the list of punishments...

[ctein]

Dear Sarge,

Seems to me you're asking two questions, one aesthetic and one legal.

First question: it's aesthetically tricky to do unless your original intent was to get to a monochrome photograph. Color compositions don't usually work well when converted to black and white. I could write a whole column about that, maybe I will sometime. It's not an absolute, Just that the odds are against it in any given case. In my portfolio, only one photograph ever turned out to be significantly better as a black and white, after I'd photographed it with color intent: "It Doesn't Matter...""

Second question: the mere act of changing from color to black and white or vice versa is not “transformative” under copyright law, so the result would be a derivative work and so prohibited without permission of the copyright holder. But… It might be part of a larger process that did make it a transformative act. Furthermore, for stock photographs such as these, the licenses rarely restrict how the photograph may be used. You're licensing someone else to use your property, but they can slice, dice, and muck with it as they see fit before reproducing it. SOP.

~~~~

Dear Gary,

I am extremely disappointed that my rant did not rise to the level of deserving that ultimate derogatory cliché: “arrogant.” Seeing as you thought it qualified for so many others.

A mere “unsatisfactory” grade doesn't meet my low standards; I will work harder next time to earn your full disapproval.

~~~~

Dear Paul,

That's part of what bothered me, was that there was a lack of irony or even postmodern sensibility. You can do this kind of thing to be arch. In fact, I can imagine a whole project that would be pretty hilarious and terrifying, taking classic old portraits and applying modern Hollywood sensibilities to them–– the wrinkle removing tools in portrait software, the plastic surgeon previewing tools to give Hitchcock a proper facelift and get rid of the bags under Lincoln's eyes. It would be fun in a over-the-top way. Then it becomes a societal commentary that can both appall and amuse at the same time.

pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. MacSpeech in training! ]
======================================
-- Ctein's Online Gallery http://ctein.com 
-- Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com 
======================================

[Bill Tyler]

"I'll be on a plane to Toronto for two weeks ". That's one heck of a long flight.

Bill

[Anton]

It's _not_ about improving aesthetics...

[Richard Tugwell]

I thought the Migrant Mother example was interesting. I've always thought that the image glamourised the poverty in an almost quasi-religious way that is in no way true to to the set of images from which it is taken. A bit like some Victorian genre paintings of ragamuffins. To me the colourised version just moved it that bit closer to the chocolate box cover. I know it's an icon of American history, and of difficult times, so I apologise if I'm not paying the right amount of respect

[Stephen McCullough]

Whether or not the exercise is useful or attractive is, I suppose, a matter of personal taste.

I don't see the point in the exercise. What I find disturbing is the lack of attention to detail. It seems these are being passed off as accurate interpretations of how these people looked, rather than as artistic renditions. If that's the case, then the lack of accuracy in the case of Lincoln is annoying at best.

I don't see any value in including Anne Frank, and if the same lack of research occurred then it goes beyond bad taste to being objectionable.

I just don't see the point.

[Ctein]

Dear Bill,

They told me it would be the "scenic route".

I have been told the Martian canals are lovely this time of year.

Oops, they're calling for boarding. Gotta run.

pax / Ctein

[Rob]

Great post and discussion. There are two issues here: artistry and authenticity. It is safe to say that if some of the original images had been poorly done in color, they would not have become that icons that they are. Yet others would have achieved that status regardless of the medium. So, are people offended because the colorization sucks or because it is disrespectful of the creators of the original photos?

[Craig C.]

@John Holland - thank you for pointing out Ctein's mouseover caption; I would never have seen it without your assistance, and I was in need of a laugh today.

@David Bateman - I certainly hope TIME is about to discontinue publishing their printed rag. It's a crying shame to think that ink and paper would be wasted in an effort to monetize such drivel.

Other comments discuss the pro's and con's of colorization, how well she did or didn't faithfully follow historical evidence, yet other than Ctein, no one else has commented on the two facts that are screaming at me:

1. TIME Magazine somehow has determined this is "news" worth reporting, and indeed spend money commissioning the young lady.

2. to quote the article,

--- The 22-year-old Swedish artist began colorizing images in January 2011, when she was listening to the debut album by rock band Rage Against the Machine. The self-titled album’s cover art is a black-and-white picture of a self-immolating monk taken by AP photographer Malcolm Browne. “I thought the normally fiery flames looked so dull in black and white, so I…looked for a way to make them come alive,” she says. Dullaway colorized the flames, and eventually, the entire picture. She then posted the image on Reddit, and it instantly went viral. ----

I'm certainly glad that my local art venues (Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Walker Art Center) use a more discerning criteria for selecting the artists they decide to exhibit.

I'll reserve my disgust and disdain for TIME and its editors - I wonder when they'll have a full "special issue" homage to Richard Prince and his "original" artistry.

[Ctein]

Dear folks,

Just so credit goes where it belongs, the column is 100% mine but Mike gets all the credit for the hilarious rollover on the picture.

pax / Ctein

[Dan Smith]

Next the Stars sewed on Jews in WWII photos will be changed to Happy Faces and the Death Camp stripes will be red, white and blue or shades of pastels.

[Dennis]

The Lincoln & Civil War photos look like colorized b&w to me - nothing that serves much purpose. The sailor shot looks realistic, but I agree with Ctein that, like the billboard shot, it loses something in translation (the colors change the composition in a bad way, even if the colorization was otherwise well done). The burning monk shot looks ok, except that the flames look like they were pasted in from another photo; they don't look like they belong in the same shot. The Vietnam shot looks realistic and no better or worse as far as impact IMO. All in all, I don't see the point - time spent doing something that serves no good purpose, and certainly don't see why Time paid to have it done, but OTOH, I don't find it remotely as objectionable as others. Certainly not deserving of a MOAR ;)

[Rowan]

Whilst I agree that the choice of photos does get more upsetting as you progress, and that two or three of them are in downright bad taste, I can't help but admire the technical proficiency in the colouring - some of them are excellently done.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

@ John Camp: "And finally, this has nothing to do with Andy Warhol or anything he was up to; nor does it have anything to do with modern art."

I had not considered the angle of appropriated presentation, John. But, at the risk of opening a still-moist (Rickard) scab, why could this not be construed as congruent with, say, Richard Prince? Add a little MFA-style artist statement, put it at a prominent NY art dealer, it gets bought by a few prominent collectors and is consequently publicized in ARTNews and voila we have a new "young talent"! And this young lady gets her college loans paid-off by Christmas!

[Stan B.]

fjf- I take it you haven't seen Less Americains...

http://colinpantall.blogspot.com/2012/04/mishka-henner-and-erasing.html

[Milton]

Give the girl a break. She's 22 years old, and she's a pioneer of sorts. She created her own technique out of scratch. She's not a historian. I say she deserves some respect.

Now, maybe you'd like to take it up with Time for commisioning this work. I guess that would be reasonable. But still, I don't hear any serious critique other than :

a. The possible historic color inaccuracies
b. What I believe to be the main issue here, which is the superiority of black and white vs colour.

So yes. Artistically, these photos are inferior. I agree.
But the point of the feature was to give, I believe a more realistic depiction of the time, not a more artistic one. In this respect, I think the photos are doing waht they're supposed to do. Not an artistic experience. Just a different one.

Honestly, if find your rant slightly pretentious.
With respect.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the artist whatsoever.

[Patrick Dodds]

I actually don't mind some of them and agree with the comment about their making historical scenes more easy to relate to. Am I a heathen? Probably. Still - onward! Nothing stays the same for ever...

[David Bostedo]

On a personal note, I thought it was really interesting at least to see photos I know well colorized; If nothing else, it's interesting to think about which version I think works better. (I haven't understood some people's undying devotion to B&W, but I'm trying... to understand it anyway, if not agree with it.) The Eisenstadt kissing picture in particular, I think, is somewhat improved. (As is the Bourke-White... I think the color to me shows more dissonance between the billboard and the people.)

One question for Ctein - if the colors in these had been slavishly researched and made as accurate as possible, would that make the exercise more valuable?

[Kevin Purcell]

Do folks like their 1930s Depression in only Black and White?

I wonder if those that dislike the colorized Lange "Migrant Mother" also dislike the real FSA color photographs (1600 of them) at the Library of Congress. Google "fsa color" to find them.

BTW, the first shot of Lincoln at Antetum makes me think of a diorama model shots. I guess that "lack of depth of field" and spherical aberration away from the center just make me think "Model Village" art filter.

[Ken]

If you don't like 'em, you don't have to look.

I happen to think the photos are interesting. I like black and white photography but, to paraphrase another commenter, life happens in color. Aside from nitpicking about historical accuracy, this colorization shows the images in a whole new light.

[David]

Technically, I thought they are excellent.

[Roger Moore]

I'm inclined to agree with Martin about the Lincoln photos. We're so used to seeing monochrome Lincoln that a colorized version is something of a shock, but it's the shock of recognizing this distant historical figure as a flesh-and-blood human. If colorizing a photograph helps us remember that Lincoln was another politician whose contemporaries mistrusted him at least as much as we mistrust politicians today, it won't be a completely wasted exercise.

[Bill Poole]

This exercise is nothing more than a game for the colorist and a marketing trick for the publisher. While life may happen in color, photographs are not life. Rather they are life (or perhaps something else) filtered through the perceptions of a photographer responding to what is before him (or her) with the tools at his (or her) disposal. The underlying assumption that color is inherently better misunderstands the nature of the art. This is not Bach on modern instruments. In almost every instance, the originals feel more authentic as both art and history.

[Steve Jacob]

"It's sometimes hard for people to understand that B&W doesn't automatically denote a handicap."

And equally hard for people to understand that sometimes it does.

[Paul Amyes]

Oh dear I must confess that I quite liked them.

It will only be a matter of time before those images become 3D colour hologramtic projections with sound. I look forward to the howls of anguish that will release.

[expiring_frog]

I agree with Martin. These photos cannot be defended as art or improvement of the original in any way. But, as a one-off intellectual exercise, they do remind us that the past was not b&w/sepia. I think not enough people are able to bridge that disconnect, and there is a visceral reaction to seeing figures of history in a "modern" representation, one that you might find on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper.

I don't see this as sacrilege or as diminishing the originals.

This is different from colorizing old movies, because (most of) those don't claim to be literal social documents.

[Ed Hawco]

I was once wholly and fully against colorization, and I still am to a great extent. As Ctein says in one of the comments above, one of the biggest problems with this particular batch is the lack of sensibility that was brought to the project. Seems like colorization for its own sake.

One thing that changed my mind somewhat, and under some circumstances, is the WWII documentary series "Apocalypse: The Second World War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse:_The_Second_World_War) It's a particularly unsettling documentary series that focuses very much on the destruction of the war and the human -- in particular, the civilian -- toll.

That sort of thing is hard enough to watch, but in this case all of the B&W footage (which means about 95% of it) was colorized. It wasn't all particularly well done; some was a bit garish, some less so. Some was really well done.

But here's the killer: we're so used to seeing film from that war as grainy, blurry, and black and white, which gives it a very distant feel. But in this case the colorization gave it an immediate *right now* feel, which really drove home that human toll and made it seem real and visceral and not just something from mouldering history books.

The series is not without its faults, but if you're interested in the world wars and think you've seen and heard everything, then check out that series and be prepared to feel gutted at the end of it (thanks largely but not entirely to the colorization).

[Kelli Tinker]

Well, everyone has a right to their opinion & you definitely have yours-LoL!

[Terra Sheridan]

I think they should be left as they were....It tells their original story. It's like someone else painting over a Picaso. Just not good taste.

[Terra Sheridan]

And why would we alter them? What about the rights of our children? And their children?

[Ted]

I actually like the pictures. I do enjoy the originals as they are and some convey more emotion in black and white but on the same note, the coloring gives a different feel and can evoke a different feeling in people. As they are I think she did a good job in coloring them.

[Mani Sitaraman]

Craig: "Time has never been a particularly high-class publication..."

A small voice of protest against the generalization. There was a long time period of decades when it was the magazine of record for reporting on national and world affairs.

[DAna Barrett]

The colorizing was particularly unnatural and scary. I couldn't get over Lange's piece. No way was the reality that happy. Could you imagine what these great photographers would think? I did however find your article most enjoyable. The instagram comment literally made me bust out in laughter. thanks guys :)

[Paul Crouse]

Really? I kind of like it. For some of the photos, it make the people seem more like real, like you and me.
Different strokes....

[Bear.]

Kinda cute ...

Not really. The only saving grace is that each image is next to an original - judge for yourself.

To get the rollover in firefox 16.0.2 you need to have pop-up blocking off, or an exception for the site - funny Mike.

[Player]

Blue eyes aside, I thought the Lincoln pictures were interesting if only to provide a more realistic rendering of how Lincoln actually looked. Yes! Lincoln was a flesh-and-blood man and not a distant black-and-white myth. Cool.

[Johannes]

It's Halloween, after all ..

[D. Hufford.]

A few of them were---or would have been---interesting to me (Lincoln et al at Antietam) , if they had been properly researched to ensure that they were as historically accurate as possible.

If someone took an old newspaper article and decided to modernize the language and in doing so introduced factual errors and historical inaccuracies, I don't think it would be appreciated no matter how wonderfully written it was. I feel the same about photographs like these. If someone is going to "modernize" them, then they owe it to viewers to research for historical accuracy, or else add some sort of "artist's interpretation" statement.

In addition, I don't think the colorization improved many of the photos. The one of the burning monk in Vietnam, is a possible exception, but the Dorothea Lange image? No.

I also assume that even if color were not available, or not chosen by a photographer, that the person made some choices that he/she would not have made had they used color. Would Lange have done anything differently with her photo if she had taken it in color?

Still, the possible historical inaccuracies are what bothers me most about most of these. Were Time as serious news magazine, I'd be more bothered, but it ain't and is hasn't been for years. I suppose that I should take it with the same seriousness that I would had MAD magazine published them.

[Iñaki]

But the contrary can be said as well, when taking a colour photo, and switching it to BW, specially with current technologies.

The B/W conversion is usually very much used to turn mediocre colour photos into more punchy images. That is what is happening here, when turning a BW photo into a colour one, it does loos quite some punch.

[Ctein]

Dear Kevin,

An always-interesting question that was raised really seriously in the Vietnam era. Many folks feared that color, first used heavily in that war, would prettify the horror too much. Of course that turned out to be anything but the case!

The TOP readership is so diverse that I'm sure there will be some folks here who feel that way ( about the Vietnam and/or the FSA work). Obviously I am not one of them, but I will be most interested in others' responses. I'd guess it will not be the common sentiment.

My problems with the coloring is not the existence of color per se but that, as I said repeatedly, this is inept. Really, truly inept. Sometimes I have to color/colorize in my restoration work. I am not close to being a master of it in my practice, but I know what is required for it to be done well (which is how I know I'm not very good). This stuff is clown-face; it's crap. It offends me because it screws up the meanings and import instead of reinforcing them (which it could do, at least in theory).

pax / Ctein

[Ctein]

Dear Richard,

I hope Mike will put in his thoughts, because he's much better at this sort of analysis, but with that said...

I'm wondering if there might not be a cultural difference in perception. I don't think most Americans look at that photo and see it as prettifying or romanticizing photography. The photo is on the right side of that sensibility.

In fact, much of its impact come from it being very close to the line-- she's not far from being pretty. The pose is not far from being accepting or beatific or even slightly happy. It's so close... But it's not. At least, as Americans would read it. Which makes it that much more powerful in its impact, because viewers can imagine how the world it shows might be different. It's not an unimaginable change, an inevitable gulf.

Another way it works is that she is within hailing distance of pretty. Experiments show that people think bad things should happen to ugly people, not pretty people. That replicates cross-culturally (although what constitutes "pretty" is local, of course). I don't know that it's a moral judgement, it might just be that people identify with attractive images so its easier for their brains to subconsciously say, "Hey, that could be ME." So it registers as worse when something bad is happening to someone nice looking. For Americans, her visage in this photo is a very self-identifiable one. Which makes the situation feel more wrong.

Anyway, that's my American take on it. Whether the visuals read the same way across cultures I couldn't say, but it's possible they don't.

And if not, then the colorizer might be excused for screwing up the mood with that so-inappropriate fresh-scrubbed color, as a misread across a cultural divide... If this were an isolated instance. But since most or all her renderings screw up, the core problem isn't with this one interpretation, it is that she's just plain tone deaf, photographically speaking.

pax / Ctein

[Carlo]

I actually liked some of these. In most cases I prefer the black and white image, but the colourized Hitchcock portrait was quite good and I enjoyed some of the Lincoln images, accurate or not, he seemed very much real and alive in the colour versions. I can think of many things to be outraged about, this isn't one of them.

[Pierre Munson]

Can we expect this to be followed by a series of Eggleston's photos to be reworked in B&W?

[Plmesserschmitt]

I agree with Ken if you don't like them don't look. Another's talent is just that, theirs. I think dissecting another person's imagination leaves a lot to be desired. I also agree with David Bennet's comments as well. Maybe you should read the rationale behind book burning.

If you have blown past your limits maybe it's time to look in another box?

[Mani Sitaraman]

As it happened, I looked at a print edition of Time magazine, the one with the cover story about Daniel Day-Lewis playing Lincoln in the movie.

The print version of the Lincoln portrait above is quite different. Oddly, the eyes are colored brown, not blue, as in the online version and above, and the skin tones are rendered as dark complexioned Caucasian.

Since the same photoshop artist gets credit for both, I wonder if Time's online photo folks slyly changed the eye color to blue and lightened the skin tone, merely to make the picture startle even more, onscreen...

[George LeChat]

No offense, but why not just fix it? If he was dark with gray eyes, make him so.

[Antoni]

These are the first photos in the world that look better on my cheap Dell laptop's screen than on my 24". Perhaps they're just optimized ;)

[Johan Grahn]

Interesting to read the comments this time.
Can't help to think that if Ctein had made his comment go the other way. Saying how instead how interesting it was to see all these images in a new light. Get a glimpse of how the reality actually was 100 years ago. Many of you would instead agreed with him.

It doesn't bother me so much to see these colorized photos in a new way. And this has nothing to do with the fact the person who did this is from my country.

Remember seeing some other very early color photos. Think it was from the 1930s. It really made me think what it was like to live at that time. Not quite as colorless as I had been led to believe from my parents old albums from their childhood.

A more important question to me is the intention of the artist.

[Robert S.]

I agree that these are pretty terrible and tasteless. The only photo I found somewhat interesting is the "American Way." I've seen it many times, and while I knew on some level that the people standing in line were black, it didn't really hit home until I saw this version. That adds another layer to the photo IMO. But I still don't like it.

[Colin K]

I'm as much of a yahoo as anybody, but this critique feels dangerously close to the bottomless chasm of photography-as-photocopying that makes many a wealthy camera owner a complete bore.

The original photos were themselves manipulations of reality, images which captured not just a set of facts but also a sense of the feeling. The text made clear that the artist's intent was not forensic reconstruction but emotional manipulation.

As an alternative, see these photos taken very early in the 20th century, when color was possible but extraordinarily laborious:

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/ethnic.html

[Eric Rose]

ohmyeffingctein! I respect your opinion however I don't agree with it. I actually found the colorized photos quite interesting in a historical sense.

[Jim Richardson]

You know, I'm not sure I agree entirely. Mostly. But not entirely. Especially when it comes to picture No. 11 in their online gallery. Suddenly Lincoln, the man, is sitting there looking out very frankly at the camera (no photographer's posed gesture) and he seems more real. He looks like a person, not a character in an historic photo, but a real person. In that regard I appreciate the opportunity to see Lincoln in this way. I'll go back to preferring the original photograph soon enough. But for a little bit this opened a window for me to see something I really hadn't expected about the man himself.

[Mike Johnston]

Jim,
That's a valid response. As was Dave Reichert's, certainly. As I said, this post was simply my own personal comment to Ctein's "Ohmyeffingod" post. As such it's not necessarily any better or worse than anyone else's comment. Just more visible. And a bit (self-indulgently) longer. [g]

Mike

[Nigel]

How sure are we that this is meant to be construed as serious? 'Dullaway' - what a great name to give a clue its a hoax. Black and white to colour - just add Dullaway.

[Ed. Note: I have disallowed several other comments making fun of the retoucher's name as being not in the friendly spirit of the site, but Nigel actually makes a good point...maybe it is a clue. At least it wasn't done by Hugh Adder or Mo Kroma--that would give the game away.]

[Kevin Purcell]

Senna Dullaway is real (and Swedish!). It's not a hoax.

http://forrifarg.se/?lang=en

Förr i färg == "old paint"?

She is making a book which will focus on the American Civil War.

[Tschet]

I find they range from bad to creepy. Several of them are images caught in a moment of incredible tragedy. The fact someone spent untold hours trying to improve on this I find disturbing.

[david wong]

I am going to stop converting my color photos to B&W in protest, :)

[Torquil Macneil]

Wow, too many comments to read through. I just want to add that the eyes in the Lincoln photo attached to the article ARE grey. It is a bluish grey (but grey eyes always are). So I think she got that right at least.

[V Keller]

the horror

[Ctein]

Dear Torquil,

Not according to the readily available records, in this case. Painters of the time describe his eyes variously as ranging from hazel to a greenish grey. No one describes them as bluish. They also consistently report the darker skin tones Lincoln himself mentions.

This is not hard information to find. Took me moments. The colorizer just didn't effin' care.

pax / Ctein