
How does the process of colourisation affect our understanding of history? - prismatic
https://www.historytoday.com/paul-lay/any-colour-you
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candiodari
It seems scary how wrong our understanding sometimes goes. We can get many
details right and yet totally miss the essence. Roman and ancient Greek
buildings have all been bleached by the wind over time. Which makes us think
they were white because they used pretty white concrete. That's what they look
now.

In fact they were very colorful, with drawings everywhere.

Same thing with their texts. The surviving texts have been selected. First by
Romans themselves, then by medieval religious people. And while at least
Christians were very good about copying letter by letter (thus preserving the
less Christian aspects of the texts, with tidbits like celebrating Sentors'
birthdays with "no more than 3 prostitutes per senator, and 2 per guest",
along with the medical knowledge that that attitude preserved as well),
they're still selected works.

Over the past 3-4 decades it's become clear that Romans, at least in the
center of the Empire, were vulgar (constant cursing, prostitution at a scale
you wouldn't believe, orgies, parties, wine and alcohol everywhere and for
every last occassion. They had advertisements (which were fun, because most
people in Rome couldn't read. There was thus no point in making a commercial
message like "best doctor ever" or "pools improved again", "now cheaper" ...
no point, they'd just paint an emblem on essentially any wall)

People would graffiti down contact info for people's wives, children, slaves,
or just the people themselves, insulting them by listing what sex acts they're
(one presumes allegedly) good at. Or just questioning their legal status or
the like.

That's the sort of society that existed in the center of the ancient world.
This cold, stoic, organized, rigid society you see in every movie and quite a
few books probably never existed.

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roman737646
How does one entertain the idea that textual advertising was redundant due to
an illiterate population in one sentence, and then proclaim that graffiti
detailing contact info and defamation through personal insults was found in
abundence in the next?

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dang
I found it impossible to believe that the photo in the article was from 1865,
but it is:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Lewis+Powell&source=lnms&tbm...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Lewis+Powell&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjs-
orw1O7eAhVOHjQIHacMA9QQ_AUIDigB&biw=1420&bih=944). It's not only the color;
his hair and his expression seem completely modern.

~~~
mbrumlow
TIL: In the 1800 criminals were actually models. And good looking ones too.

This could be a Calvin Klein model!

[https://imgur.com/VJnmv8k](https://imgur.com/VJnmv8k)

~~~
dang
You're right - that's what gets me about his facial expression. It's how
models pose. By contrast, this one looks more like a mug shot:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Lewis+Powell&source=lnms&tbm...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Lewis+Powell&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjs-
orw1O7eAhVOHjQIHacMA9QQ_AUIDigB&biw=1420&bih=944#imgrc=_pR1jSsuXIP9tM):

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TipVFL
The work done to clean up the footage in that Peter Jackson documentary is
impressive, but the colorization is not. It basically looks like a movie
colorization from the 80s, where they just segmented the image and painted one
color over each section.

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lubujackson
I think what is missing when people think about colorization is how the the
look, feel and fidelity of an image places it in our minds. It is less about
the exact colors than the specific style of color palette that we have
catalogued in our brains with all kinds of weird associations.

Right now we think colorization looks great when it looks like a modern,
natural palette from a photo shoot or movie, but it looks schmaltzy and cheap
when it mirrors some 1950s over-saturated early foray into color film. We have
those placeholders in our minds and quickly deduce which is good and which is
bad.

But those verdicts change over time because they are as much fashion as
anything. For example, many Instagram filters emulated early film cameras but
now people simply look at certain photos and dismiss them of they look too
filtered.

Or a new trend I've noticed in YouTube music videos where they are made to
look like old VHS camcorder home movies for some ungodly reason. Those VHS
artifacts are now a style choice because we've see interesting things that
have those attributes and want to capture some of that spirit.

Color is always going to be a style choice and colorization choices say as
much about what we are used to seeing right now as they do about how things
looked in reality back then... though they are weirdly and closely
intertwined.

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bb2018
I watch a lot of documentaries. There is a big shift in behavior from pre-2000
to post-2000. Pre-2000 is pre reality tv and pre technology. Nowadays people
approach interviews differently. I'm not saying one is more real than the
other and it is clear people have different goals/mindsets when being
interviewed.

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8bitsrule
The 'colourisation' (foreign spelling) of astronomy photos is also misleading.
I blame it on the allures of 'artist's conception' pictures like Bonestell's.
Seems we prefer a fantasy universe.

~~~
throwmeback
how is returning colours to a monochrome photo misleading? if it's done to
restore actual colours then this doesn't feel like a fantasy universe - quite
otherwise.

