Rare Color Photos German Front Line WW1

[thirteen]

WW1 photos are usually B&W. I found it interesting to see color photos of this time. The captions indicate that due to the film's lack of sensitivity the photos were posed for long periods of time giving a surrealistic feel to them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pic...e-German-front-line-during-World-War-One.html

 

[oftheherd]

Quite interesting. Thanks for the link.

 

[free2move]

Thanks for sharing! You can almost taste the grittiness in the photos... interesting grain

 

[charjohncarter]

Very fantastic, they almost look like they are enjoying themselves. I read about the color process. It had something to do with potatoes.

 

[nobbylon]

great to see these, thx

 

[Nh3]

Color can make WWI front lines look like picnic in a ruined village.

 

[Paul C. Perkins MD]

"In Flanders Fields where poppys blow
amid the crosses row on row. . . "

Thanks for the link.

Paul

 

[acheyj]

"In Flanders Fields where poppys blow
amid the crosses row on row. . . "

Thanks for the link.

Paul

Well said Paul

What a "pretty picture" the war looked ,

I WEEP !

Australian male population 1914 3 million, 331,781 sent to the otherside of our world,
215,585 casualties
60,000 DEAD.


ron

 

[brachal]

Thank you for the link; those are amazing. I find that color provides a more immediate connection ... black and white tends to create a separation between viewer and subject, at least in historical photos.

Coming very late to the war, the US suffered nearly 60,000 deaths ... most in the last six months of the conflict.

 

[eli griggs]

Thanks for the link, I like these for both the photography and to share with other C&R enthusiast.

The approach to these photographs are so very different from the American War of Northern Aggression, particularly those of Mathew Brady.

I wonder how different his approach to photography would have been if he had to chose between colour and b&W materials and what the impact of colour would have had on his posing of the dead?

Cheers

 

[williams473]

Thanks for sharing. The color is certainly historically interesting and gives a sort of authticity to the men pictured, although the photographer clearly is trying to avoid the gruesome, massively destructive nature of the war. Even his photograph of the crosses has a idyllic beauty to it. Still, that was his creative choice, and he lived on to shoot later, so good for him. I don't buy that it is the film speed that kept him from shooting the results of combat though - O'Sullivan managed to make some pretty gruesome images of Civil War dead at Gettysburg, and that was using wet plate processes and a view camera.

You got me searching out some WWI combat photography, and I found a wealth of it here:

http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/warpictures/part-01/index.htm#verdun

The combat photography is clearly from the front lines, and I would imagine there were a good many correspondants who lost their lives making these images, given the sheer volume of shelling in battles like Verdun, when hundreds of shells would fall a minute for hours at a time.