Old Colour Photographs

Old Colour photos hold great fascination for me. Generally historic imagery is associated with Black and White prints. These provide an insight as to what the world looked like back then.

Frank Scherschel - Hambledon Village, England, Spring 1944

It is hard to remember that the world was infact in colour, the same as it is now.  With the first modern colour film becoming available in 1935, Black and White's legacy still ran on.
The article I have found and am looking at now showcases a group of images taken in WW2. Thinking about the war, textbooks and documentaries invariably show black and white imagery from this time period with colour photographs being omitted and hard to come by.

 

 Frank Scherschel - Maintenance work on an American P-47 Thunderbolt in a makeshift airfield in the French countryside, 1944.

When viewing the images in Black and White, I can feel myself becoming detached from them. The alien landscape of war, coupled with the deprivation of colour make them feel unrealistic. These images however bring that realism back, they feel like they could have been taken just yesterday with the use of props.

Sources:
http://life.time.com/history/before-and-after-d-day-in-color/#1
Further Reading:
Early 1900s in Colour