Quote:For me it's the black and white historic photo that is dishonest in the sense that it doesn't represent reality. The color technology didn't exist but history has always happened in color. Color doesn't change what the photographer captured but creates what he really saw through the lens.
As an older person who grew up with black & white photography, I like its sense of nostalgia and the artistic way it can create mood, atmosphere. I also like seeing the world as Lincoln would have lived it- in color.
Anita,
I can certainly understand your point, and in a very limited way, I agree with you. It is interesting to those of us who are used to color photographs to see things in color, but when those photos were taken, the photographer was doing so in order to capture a moment in time. The German historian Leopold Von Ranke made the comment that
Geschichte, wie sie tatsächlich passiert ist, or roughly translated, "we must study history as it actually happened." The same discussion took place when films in Hollywood were colorized. Did the colorized version change the feeling one got from the film? I think it did.
Plus, while I haven't read Cox's book yet, I don't know if he offered an explanation as to why the photos were colorized. I will have to see what he says.
Best
Rob
