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Color photos from WW1 !!!


BERIGAN

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Color photography was explored throughout the 19th century. Initial experiments in color could not fix the photograph and prevent the color from fading. Moreover until the 1870s the emulsions available were not sensitive to red or green light.

The first permanent color photo was taken in 1861 by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Several patentable methods for producing images (by either additive or subtractive methods, see below) were devised from 1862 on by two French inventors (working independently), Louis Ducos du Hauron and Charles Cros (see Coe, ref 1, for details). Practical methods to sensitize silver halide film to green and then orange light were discovered in 1873 and 1884 by Hermann W. Vogel. (Full sensitivity to red light was not achieved until the early years of the 20th century.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_photography

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It's long been my opnion that WWII has blunted our impression of the horror that was WWI. As horrific as the Holocaust, the bombing of Dresden, and Hiroshima/Nagasaki were, the fact was the mankind had seen nothing to prepare it for the horrors of the first Word War, with it's trench warfare and chemical weapons. Seeing these photos might help make WWI seem real to students in a way it never has before. It's hard to really process grainy black and white photos. But these photos, as someone else said, look as though they were taken yesterday. A great resource!

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Great site!

Color images were rather rare by 1914. The process was launched by the Lumière brothers (Auguste and Louis) by 1907.

Some more colour images can be seen here.

Click on the Photographies - Aout-Septembre 1914 window for several views.

Agree with Alexander on the murderous impact of WWI. All French cities and villages still have monuments to the dead of La Grande Guerre. When viewing these monuments which list the names of the fall soldiers, one cannot fail to be staggered by the number of the dead even in small remote villages!

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Funny, I don't even remember how I found the WW1 site! I checked Wikipedia, which is where I found out about Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

(check out this great picture he took of himself)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...-Gorskii-12.jpg

Like Big Al and Alexander said, some of these photos look like they were taken yesterday....

http://www.pixelparadox.com/images/russia_1.jpg

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  • 4 years later...

Great site!

Color images were rather rare by 1914. The process was launched by the Lumière brothers (Auguste and Louis) by 1907.

Some more colour images can be seen here.

Click on the Photographies - Aout-Septembre 1914 window for several views.

I suppose Heinrich Kuhn would have been using the Lumiere process... he was working in color around that time as well. Neat exhibition of his work at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston right now.

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