50+ Historic Black And White Photographs Restored In Color That Will Change The Way You Look At History

Photography was invented two centuries ago, and the period of colorized photographs is a lot shorter than that. Color makes us perceive the photograph more realistic, and since we live in the age of color, black and white photographs seem very old. The restoration process requires many skills and imagination, such as outfits of the subjects, time of the day, amount of light, backgrounds, the color of minor objects in photographs, guesswork, and many more. Even having all the information about the subject or the event, you can never be 100 percent sure of the true colors and hues that could have been captured at the time when the photograph was taken. The restored photographs have a surprisingly unique effect on our perspective. By seeing those historical photographs in color, we can relate to them easier, and it makes the photographs a whole lot more powerful. Fortunately, many talented people and communities bring life back in photographs by digitally coloring them. There is a group of talented folks in Reddit called r/ColorizedHistory; they pick historical pictures and bring them back to life by coloring them. Have a look at these amazing colorized photographs, vote your favorites, and don’t’ forget to share. If you are interested in more, check out colorized portraits of famous personalities of the 18th & 19th centuries.

#1 “The Tall Cowboy”, Ralph E. Madsen with Senator Morris Sheppard, 1919

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#2 Auto Wreck in Washington D.C, 1921

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#3 W.H. Murphy and his Associate Demonstrating their Bulletproof Vest on October 13, 1923

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#4 Audrey Hepburn

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#5 Old Gold’, Country Store, 1939

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#6 Nikola Tesla, 1893

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#7 Mark Twain in the Garden, circa 1900

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#8 Charlie Chaplin at the Age of 27, 1916

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#9 Women Delivering Ice, 1918

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#10 Portrait Used to Design the Penny. President Lincoln Meets General McClellan – Antietam, Maryland ca September 1862

Original photo Alexander Gardner/Colourized by Zuzzah

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#11 Marilyn Monroe, 1957

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#12 Helen Keller meeting Charlie Chaplin in 1919

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#13 Painting WWII Propaganda Posters, Port Washington, New York – 8 July 1942

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#14 Louis Armstrong practicing in his dressing room, ca 1946

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#15 Broadway at the United States Hotel Saratoga Springs, N.Y. ca 1900-1915

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#16 Dancers of the National American Ballet, 20 August 1924

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#17 Young Woman with Umbrella – Louisiana, 1937

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#18 Peatwy Tuck of the Meskwahki, 1898

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#19 An Ojibwe Native American spearfishing, Minnesota, 1908

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#20 Adolf Hitler with Mussolini’s son-in-law and Joachim von Ribbentrop, attend a Nazi Party rally, ca 1930s

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#21 British tattoo artist George Burchett, the “King of Tattooists”, ca 1930

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#22 Post officers show off their brand-new “Autopeds” scooters, Washington, D.C., 1917

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#23 Joe Lincoln of Accord, champion decoy maker of New England, 1926

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#24 Abandoned Boy Holding a Stuffed Toy Animal. London 1945

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#25 Albert Einstein, Summer 1939 Nassau Point, Long Island, NY

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#26 Young Boy in Baltimore Slum Area, July 1938

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#27 Elizabeth Taylor – Giant (1956 film)

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#28 Hindenburg Disaster – May 6, 1937

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#29 Japanese Archers, circa 1860

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#30 View from Capitol in Nashville, Tennessee During the Civil War, 1864

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#31 Unemployed Lumber Worker, circa 1939

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#32 Big Jay McNeely Driving the Crowd at the Olympic Auditorium into a Frenzy, Los Angeles, 1953

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#33 Joseph Goebbels Scowling at Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt after Finding out he’s Jewish, 1933

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#34 British Troops Cheerfully Board their Train for the First Stage of their Trip to the Western Front – England, September 20, 1939

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#35 Oscar II, King of Sweden and Norway, 1880

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#36 Walt Whitman, 1887

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#37 Times Square, 1947

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#38 Newspaper boy Ned Parfett sells copies of the evening paper bearing news of Titanic’s sinking the night before. (April 16, 1912)

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#39 Easter Eggs for Hitler, c 1944-1945

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#40 Sergeant George Camblair practicing with a gas mask in a smokescreen – Fort Belvoir, Virginia, 1942

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#41 Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge ca 1935

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#42 Theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, 1921

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#43 Otto Frank, Anne Frank’s father and the only surviving member of the Frank family revisiting the attic they spent the war in, 3 May 1960

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#44 Crowded Bunks in the Prison Camp at Buchenwald, April 16, 1945

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#45 Boys after buying Easter flowers in Union Square, New York, April 1908

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#46 Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Gardner, taken in February, 1865

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#47 Boxing match aboard the U.S.S. New York, July 3, 1899

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#48 Yvonne (13) and Alexander (12) Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn take drink and smoke on yacht near Majorca

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#49 Soldiers wearing gas masks while peeling onions at Tobruk, October 15, 1941

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#50 Captain Walter “Waddy” Young and his crew pose in front of their caricatures on their B-29 Superfortress, November 24, 1944

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#51 Performer Sarah Vaughan, ca 1946

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#52 Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia, sling cart used in removing captured artillery during the American Civil War, ca 1865

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#53 Slice of life! A mother helps her child off the trolley on a Broadway in New York City, July, 1913

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#54 Black man drinking at ‘Colored’ water cooler in streetcar terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahom ca July, 1939

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#55 A young John F. Kennedy immediately after his graduation from Harvard, in the summer of 1940

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#56 Times Square, D-Day, 1944

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#57 Observer on Iwo Jima, February, 1945

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#58 Children watch as their neighborhood is bombed in Minsk, Belorussia. The bombing was part of Operation Barbarossa. June, 1941

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#59 Stalin and Churchill in Livadia Palace during the Yalta Conference, February, 1945

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#60 Louis and Lucille Armstrong at the Sphinx, January 28, 1961

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