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Hell on Earth: The never before seen colour photographs of the bloody battle of Passchendaele


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... ge_id=1770


The photographs are amazing.







Look their faces...

WOW...powerful images...thx

Oh my they look so surreal!

Black and white photos just can not portray the horror that this the battle caused!

I imagine that the faces at Somme, Verdun, Ypres, etc. all looked like that.

jamesm, I absolutely agree, those pictures really capture the horror of the situation thsese men found themselves in. I cannot imagine the misery they must have felt.

Powerful images. Thanks for sharing them.

captskillet, I imagine my face has looked like that, these last few days, while waiting for release.

related question, I have about 85 unpublished steroscopic glass slides of WW1. Is there a practical way to get the pictures onto a different medium. I checked with my local photo shops but they either cant do it or want 15$ per picture.
They were collected by Dr Charles Mayo, then Brig General. They are mostly trench photos like these, but include a tank, aircraft in flight, arty barrage, local dignataries, ect.

Care to donate them instead? I know of a War Museum that would love to have them.

Corey

It is amazing the depth color brings to those photos. You see the b&w photos and it puts distance between the viewer and the event. Color removes that comfort barrier.

ORIGINAL: Haplo_Patryn
Hell on Earth: The never before seen colour photographs of the bloody battle of Passchendaele

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=467811&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770

--- snip ---

The photographs are amazing.

Absolutely riveting photos, but a quick, small clarification: I've seen some of them here and there on the 'net, also IIRC a few at the British Imperial War Museum. Also in the U.S.'s PBS sereis, The Great War. In Black & White, though!

From the newspaper article Haplo_Patryn cited:

"... these astonishing photographs, lovingly hand-touched in colour to bring to life ..."

In other words, they've been "colorized" ... quite well. Still, the B&W originals retain a lot of textural details that often get obscured in the tweaked versions.

Great find in any case !

Well, believe it or not, the first photograph is a fake!

The real photograh



And this is the fake one




...... [:-]

Nice catch, do you know who faked it? Thinking about it you are hardly likely to position an unprotected machine gun nest out in the open next to a big shell hole and if the machine gun position was there before the explosion - goodbye gunners!

Nor are you likely to stand up w/ bulky camera gear during combat and take a picture of it. [;)]

ORIGINAL: anarchyintheuk

Nor are you likely to stand up w/ bulky camera gear during combat and take a picture of it. [;)]

At least not more than once.

Donate the photos to the Imperial War Museum.  Tell them that in return you want digital copies of the pictures.
 
I am sure they will be happy to comply [:)]
 
-
 

I am very skeptical of the color in these pictures. It is monochrome in sections of the picture, where color would be rendered if made with the technology of the time.

For a description of contemporary photographic color methods go here:

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/

Also see: Autochrome process on Wikipedia etc.

Thinking about it you are hardly likely to position an unprotected machine gun nest out in the open next to a big shell hole and if the machine gun position was there before the explosion - goodbye gunners!

 
It was a 1916 German tactic to deploy machineguns into shell holes in front of their trenches once the barrage lifted. I suspect that the men concerned would have chosen new shell holes though - with less water.
 
 

Into shell holes yes but surely not outside exposed.

Into shell holes yes but surely not outside exposed.

Agreed. And I would have thought (if the pic was real) that the photographer would have had a tough time too!