In the University of California, Santa Cruz, there is a large collection of photos (about 10 thousand!) of the Soviet Union, taken by photographer Branson DeCou who travelled around the country a lot. At that time they were able to take color photos but for some reason the photographer preferred to take black-and-white ones and then colour them by himself. Taking into account the fact that it took him several hours to color just one slide, how much time then did it take him to color the whole collection?
Odessa, tourists at the port.
Odessa, a city council (or a city executive committee?).
Odessa, a shop window with portraits of Lenin and Stalin.
Odessa, a monument in Shevchenko park with a flower portrait of Stalin.
Odessa, a group of young Ukrainians.
Odessa, Londonskaya Hotel.
Odessa, Opera and Ballet Theater.
Odessa, Primorskaya (Potemkinskaya) staircase.
Odessa, a communist hammer and sickle monument.
Odessa, a store.
‘Pavilion ‘Intourist’.
Odessa, a city view.
Odessa, a street full of pedestrians.
Odessa, a bread trolley.
Odessa, a group of Ukrainian children.
Odessa, a person in a horse-drawn carriage.
Odessa, two young ladies, tour guides.
Odessa, men and women on the beach.
Odessa, a city view.
Location: Odessa
via visualhistory
Why did he color all the people like clowns?
Because these pictures were post-colored = original picture wac BW (gray-scale) and, after the processing of the film and pictures, those were colored by hands manually…
I would like to see those pictures in the original black and white. Some of them look almost like a cartoon now, the coloring has taken the original “character” or “feel” away from the scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBLWDk8q6Tc
hah, my Vysotsky repost
)) well, our world is small … thx.
In two days the movie about him will be released
You would think the people that colorized these photo’s, never actually looked at people’s faces.
NOBODY, has rosy red cheeks like that, I mean, not everybody like that!
They do, they look like the painter grew up in a household with nothing but clowns to go by.
Whenever I see pictures of the USSR of this time period, I always wonder just how many of the people in the pictures survived Stalin’s purges and the Second World War.
And maybe some of these pretty girls are today old ladies trying to survive with a tiny pension…
When I see pictures like these, I want to colour my face like a clown and wear peasant clothes. Then I will eat cabbage and pierogies and think about socialism. Or not.
Pictures are colored correctly like the first old vintage type of color pictures, it’s based on black and white shading and yes people can have rosy cheeks especially in Odessa attributed to fresh sea air and sun and positive attitude of people of Odessa. I think the pictures and the people in them look charming and not like clowns at all.
Beautiful pictures. Reminded me of pictures of Old Los Angeles I’ve seen recently.
great photos, awful coloring really. don’t look realistic at all
Thanks ER for yet another swell collection from USSR. Yes, the hand-coloring seems overdone but just look at the awful ads on TV! Color film did not come into use until late 1930′s and was expensive and slow to process. Hand-coloring gave work to artists and was popular for decades. Despite the purges and terrible things, photos of crowds in Soviet times seem to show better dressed and some satisfactions and smiles – sorry all you Russia-haters – and I like to see that.
@ andy – colour photography was available, but not commmon, long before the late 1930s.