WWI in colour photos

[StephenLawson]

Here is a large bit of fun.

Although color photography was around prior to 1903, the Lumi?re brothers, Auguste and Louis, patented the process in 1903 and developed the first color film in 1907. The French army was the primary source of color photos during the course of World War One.

Sometime in late 2004, while looking at the blog, Vodkapundit ? a great blog, btw ? I came across an external link he had to some interesting photos of World War I. What made them of interest was that they were in color! I saved them to my hard drive, and I?m glad I did... the site that had them up ended up deleting them.

So I decided to go looking for others on the web. I came across the site, Gallica, biblioth?que num?rique de la Biblioth?que nationale de France, There I found all of the images you see here, but, alas, the text was all in French, and the last time I spoke French with any frequency was 45 years ago! So I have had to use an on-line translator to get the English, although I am sure there are some mistakes in such a process, but here they are. Of course, if you speak French, you will see I have the original wording in French included.

WWI in colour

Edited June 26, 2006 by StephenLawson

[Ingsoc]

Excellent link! here another site with color pics from WWI.

The Heritage of the Great War

[PKeating]

Thank you for posting these links and for your efforts in keeping these images available. The ECPA-D - French military archives - in Fort d'Ivry just outside Paris has a wonderful collection of WW1 colour photography. The Americans were also producing colour photographs as this shot of returning Harlem Hell Fighters in 1919 shows.

PK