One of the greatest facets of reddit are the thriving
subreddits, niche communities of people who share a passion for a specific topic. The major contributors are a mix of professional and amateur colorizers that bring historic photos to life through color. All of them are highly skilled digital artists that use a combination of historical reference material and a natural eye for colour.
When we see old photos in black and white, we sometimes forget that life back then was experienced in the same vibrant colours that surround us today. This gallery of talented artists helps us remember that :)
Click on the images to view them in High Resolution!
1. Abandoned boy holding a stuffed toy animal. London 1945
“I was told he had come back from playing and found his house a
shambles—his mother, father and brother dead under the rubble…he was
looking up at the sky, his face an expression of both confusion and
defiance. The defiance made him look like a young Winston Churchill.
This photograph was used by IBM to publicize a show in London. The boy
grew up to become a truck driver after the war, and walking past the IBM
offices, he recognized his picture.”
2. Picture was taken in
Montelimar, France, in 1944
“French women who befriended the Nazis, through coerced, forced, or
voluntary relationships, were singled out for shameful retribution
following the liberation of France. The woman photographed here,
believed to have been a prostitute who serviced German occupiers, is
having her head shaved to publicly mark her.”
“The punishment of shaving a woman’s head had biblical origins. In
Europe, the practice dated back to the dark ages, with the Visigoths.
During the middle ages, this mark of shame, denuding a woman of what was
supposed to be her most seductive feature, was commonly a punishment
for adultery. Shaving women’s heads as a mark of retribution and
humiliation was reintroduced in the 20th century. After French troops
occupied the Rhineland in 1923, German women who had relations with them
later suffered the same fate. And during the second world war, the Nazi
state issued orders that German women accused of sleeping with
non-Aryans or foreign prisoners employed on farms should also be
publicly punished in this way.”
3. Hungarian Revolution of 1956
“Erika, 15, a Hungarian Freedom Fighter, carries a machine gun in Budapest during the revolution, 1956, she was eventually shot by the Soviets“
4. Machinegunners in a seemingly exposed position
circa 1916
“Some of the fellows are wearing shoes instead of marching
boots, and the lack of equipment and accoutrements, suggests this is in
fact a training environment.
The “K” on the shoulder strap stands for (King) Konstantin of Greece, Chief of the regiment since 1913.”
5. Abraham Lincoln
6. Erasmus Darwin Keyes
7. A fifteen-year-old German, 1945
A fifteen-year-old German antiaircrafter of the Hitler Youth, Hans Georg
Henke, taken prisoner by the soldiers of the 9th U.S. Army in the city
of Giessen, Germany. 29.03.1945.
8. Otto von Bismarck
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