Color won’t stick to black, nor white, so you need shades of grey. How do you select your photos? When you’re going through, why do you choose one over the other? What images do you gravitate toward?įirst of all, when quality is really poor, or when you have really extreme contrast - a lot of black or completely white - then coloring is almost impossible. That’s one of the nice things of coloring. A picture delivers so much more when it’s colorized. You discover things that you miss out on when it’s in black and white. And if you zoom in, you see new things, and in some cases, I’ve been coloring an object, but I didn’t really recognize what it was, and only after putting color in it, I suddenly found if it’s this or that. That’s how it usually works.Īnd also, you discover a lot of new things while coloring, because you really dive into the picture. Once you start, you’re going to finish it.

You color the eyes, and the lips, people start coming to life as soon as you do that. As soon as you start putting in flesh tones, people come to life. It’s always a magical moment to put in flesh tones. How does adding color to these old photos change them? What’s the effect of that, from an emotional standpoint - the difference between a black and white photo of guys on the front, and seeing it in color? Wounded sailors at the Battle of Cape Gloucester, try to enjoy their food, late December, 1943. I always try to be as historically correct as possible. So, if I can just color on autopilot, without doing any research, just putting in flesh tones and some colors in the background and clothing, maybe in half an hour or an hour, a portrait is done.īut if it’s a big group of people, or there are tanks or planes involved, usually I have to look up things, because there’s such a wide variety of markings, color schemes, out there, and it’s so easy to make a mistake. In that way you have a very big group of people you can use, and that can be very handy.

We ask questions, we try to use each other for research purposes, and that works really really well. It’s a lot of Googling and going through books that I have here, or I’m asking my fellow cohorts - we work together quite often, actually. How do you make sure you get the color right? So, in the meantime I keep searching and that can take a while. takes a ‘selfie’ in the mirror with (presumably) his girlfriend. Sometimes I can’t find a certain insignia, or color patch, or something, and as long as I’m not really sure about the exact colors, I’d rather not post the image.Ī U.S. Jakob Lagerweij: Well, that depends on the amount of research that is required. Task & Purpose: So, walk me through the process, how long does it take for a single photo? ( Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and style.) Task & Purpose had a chance to speak with Lagerweij in late June, to ask what draws him to work with old photos of war, how he chooses one over another, and how a simple dash of color can change the meaning of an image. The images, pulled from public archives and records, offer a glimpse of what the war was like for those who endured it across the globe, and at times, on different sides of the conflict.Īnd a quick look through his Facebook account shows that the work he puts into his craft isn’t confined to the images he colors, but is demonstrated in the thoroughly detailed captions he attaches to each, providing context that elevates a photo above just a pretty picture. “I thought I had invented the wheel, that it was really special that I came up with the idea to colorize on the computer, and then I found out there was a whole scene, especially for World War II and World War I.”įor the most part, Lagerweij eschews images of combat in favor of those quiet moments leading up to and after the violence is done - though the traces remain. He quickly discovered a whole online community of like-minded artists, who he turns to for help when he needs to pinpoint a specific uniform or piece of equipment belonging to a certain unit from one country or another. Professor Ilchenko of the Moscow Conservatory performs before soldiers on the Southern front.

Color war 2