Having recently started learning to recolour old photographs I had to plug the artist that inspired me to get started - Marina Amaral. She is a Brazilian colorist who specializes in adding color to black and white photographs using Photoshop through a process of careful historical research to determine the colors of each object pictured.
It’s so incredible to see old photography brought back to life with the addition of colour, it draws attention to details in the shots that black and white just can’t do. It’s like these people who seem so distant in black and white feel like they could be here today.
Her most recent project Faces of Auschwitz is particularly worth your attention if this interests you at all. She works with the people at the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum to recolour the photographs of victims of the holocaust who were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp. It’s such an important project to preserve the memory of these people and I encourage everyone to go read their stories on the site.
Here’s a video of some of Marina’s work for an idea of what recolouring looks like!
