BW pictures colorized in book

[Rob Wick]

Steve,

Thanks for weighing in (and also, thanks to everyone else). While I do enjoy watching films that have been speed-corrected, the addition of color doesn't appeal to me because the color always appeared washed out. I'm sure someone could point out that correcting speed is also a historical lie, given that the film was created by a certain method. To be honest, it doesn't bother me to watch a film that is not speed-corrected. I guess my whole problem is that when Mathew Brady took a photo of Lincoln, he had something in mind when he took it. I doubt he thought about someone adding color to it several years later, but even if he had and had no problem in doing so, it wouldn't have had the same historical truth because it was done with the materials that existed at the time.

As I've had time to consider my initial post, I accept that I'm probably making too much of this, but there's something distasteful about it in my mind. Guess that means if I am lucky enough to have my Tarbell biography accepted for publication, I will have to insist on not colorizing any pictures. I don't imagine I'll have much to worry about.

I'm editing this post in order to ask a question. I'm listening to Erik Larson's The Demon of Unrest. One thing I've noticed is that the audio censored the use of racial epithets when they appear in a historical document. While I abhor the use of the epithets, I also have a problem with their censorship in a document where they merely appear. The justification for such an edit is not the point I'm trying to make. Rather, it is that this changes the historicity of the document. Almost forgot my question. Is this the same as colorizing photos originally in black and white?

Best
Rob

[AussieMick]

Rob, this is an important issue.
Historical documents are inevitably written reflecting the mores of that time

(Not insulting anybody's intelligence here ... but to assist me, I had to look up the meaning of 'mores' ... the essential or characteristic customs and conventions of a society or community.
example "an offence against social mores" )

So there's always going to be a difficulty in understanding what was meant in , say, the Magna Carta or the Aeneid. Irish patriot Roger Casement's lawyers wasted hours arguing the meaning of a comma in a 500 year-old statute (written in medieval French) ... when he wanted them to simply show that he did not commit treason.

But, and for me this is the crux, if we fiddle with a historical document to make it more socially correct for our time then we will inevitably
alter the meaning and destroy our childrens' and granchildrens' inheritance.

There's many examples which occur to me. First off, the film Casablanca. (Yes they tried to colorize it ! when 'black and white' reflected it's theme!). In the film , Ilsa refers to Sam, the piano player as 'the Boy'. We now , rightly, consider that usage to be a gross insult. But Ilsa was using its then usage dramatically ... to suggest to the audience that this person was a colored person and seen by many as less than adult, but it later becomes clear that this person is a valued and respected friend. Indeed Rick's competitor buys Rick's nightclub and there's an echo of slavery ... but he agrees to pay Sam 10% more in wages saying, 'I happen to think he's worth more'. "Worth more" suggests to me that Sam is not simply a black piano player, but valued as an individual.

As for the Merchant of Venice and Huckleberry Finn ... there's going to need to be a lot of re-writing.

Finally, I recall Orwell's '1984', where Winston Smith's job involves re-writing newspaper articles so that events of the past reflect Big Brother's current views.

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(woops I had to go back and edit a word, so that it correctly reflected my meaning )