Book: 'The Time in Colour' brings history to life

Wednesday 26 December 2018, 16:32 by Michelle Peeters | 7,285 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Marina Amaral from Brazil never studied art and is only 24 years old. But she knows how to move people with Photoshop: she meticulously colours in images you have always seen only in black and white. This brings history back to life.

Historically accurate colourisation

Marina Amaral carried out extensive research into the original colours of the clothing, skin tones, jewellery and materials shown in the photos. Using sometimes as many as a hundred Photoshop layers, she colours in the black-and-white photos.

Because she has colourised the photos in a historically accurate way, the past sometimes comes eerily close. 'The Time in Colour' is a time machine on paper. The emotional distance you can normally maintain when looking at black-and-white photos disappears as soon as they have been colourised. The effect hits much harder.

Despite all her research, she sometimes had to make a decision. For example, she gave one of the men from Robert Scott's expedition to the South Pole a bright pink coat.

That was an artistic interpretation, as she had no documents or information that could reveal the original colour. Pink worked best in this case to make the person stand out against the blue/turquoise background.

D-Day soldiers on their way to land in Normandy on 6 June 1944. About 10% were killed or wounded that day
For critics, this may well be the biggest problem with the photos. Colourisation is a subtle distortion of history, working at the intersection of history and art. In an age of fake news, this could undermine trust in the original.

In this case, however, you do not have to choose. The originals remain intact throughout the process, so you can view the colourised version while also keeping the original black-and-white photo.

Leo Tolstoy, author of 'Anna Karenina' and 'War and Peace', tells his grandchildren Ilja and Sonja a story here, shortly before his death in 1910

Dan Jones

She created her first major work with Dan Jones, a British historian. It was compiled in the book 'The Time in Colour'. The book covers more than a hundred years of world history, from 1850 to 1960, from Queen Victoria to the assassination of President Kennedy.

The Eiffel Tower had to be red, Venetian red to be precise. That was a surprise! During its construction, the Eiffel Tower was indeed red in 1888. Now we can finally see what it looked like when it was built.

It is hard to imagine that the tower was ever red. It gives you a different perspective.

Charles Darwin and the arrest of a Jewish family in the Warsaw ghetto

Time machine on paper

The book contains lifelike portraits of famous people such as Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Sarah Bernhard, Leo Tolstoy, Queen Elizabeth II and the Wright brothers during their first gliding flights. Mata Hari in colourful robes.

The burning Hindenburg lighting up the night in bright orange. Howard Carter examining Tutankhamun's golden mask.

The colours make it possible to feel a connection with these people. They now become 'real' people. It is easy to forget that these events had an impact on many people, people with their own lives, friends, dreams and ambitions. When you see a photo in colour, you understand better what they went through.

The first gliding flights by the Wright brothers in the windy dunes of North Carolina in 1900 / The famous kiss on Times Square after the victory over Japan
The 200 iconic photos show the rise and fall of empires, milestones in science, industry and art, the tragedies of war and peacemakers. In short: the lives of men and women who shaped history.

She often chooses to make horrific scenes lifelike: First World War battlefields where a soldier's body has decayed to the bone in a trench, mass graves from civil wars, a barrack in Auschwitz or the arrest of a Jewish family in the Warsaw ghetto.

Nine kings attended the funeral of Edward VII in 1910

Price and where to order

'The Time in Colour' costs 35 euros and can be ordered from Bol.com, among other places.

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