Coventry man brings to life old photos to 'give them a home'

Coventry man brings to life old photos to 'give them a home'

Lost photographs and discarded picture albums have been a recurring theme on this blog over the years - from photos of a still under construction Tower Bridge being found in a skip, 5,000 First World War photos rescued from rubbish dumps, to rare images of the British Raj from over one hundred years ago turning up in a shoe box.  On each occasion we have marvelled at the wonderful glimpse into the past these eleventh-hour rediscoveries have afforded us while at the same time lamenting the fact that they have been so undervalued as to have been left forgotten for decades or more, often to the point of their near-destruction.

This latest article is no exception and once again it is thanks to the efforts of one collector that a number of old photographs - primarily picture postcards of his home town of Coventry and studio portraits of its inhabitants - have been saved for posterity.  Peter Knight's attitude towards preserving these "forgotten faces" is one that we can well appreciate - the thought that they might represent all that is left of a person's life, that they are the last surviving visual documentation of their existence and the travesty that would result if they were just left to gather dust (or worse).



What gives this story added inspiration is that Mr Knight has been able to use modern technology to restore the images to a startling degree of freshness, colourising them and in some cases even employing the much talked-of computer trickery that is "deep fake" to slightly animate the photos.  While I am not convinced about the latter technique, the colourisation does go some way to adding to the immediacy of the pictures, to reinvigorating the subject and, indeed, bringing them back to life.  Mr Knight's idea of incorporating these photographs into a virtual online world of an historical Coventry is also an intriguing project and one that I hope succeeds.



There has been some degree of backlash from certain quarters recently regarding how far "restoration" of old photographs and cine-footage should go following the colourisation, addition of sound effects and 4K HD & frame rate upscaling applied to the famous Lumière brothers' 1896 film L'Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat and other late 19th-/ early 20th-century footage on YouTube.  As a student of history I can well understand the disquiet that is felt at the perhaps unnecessary meddling with things that were products of their time and should be understood and appreciated as such but equally I can appreciate the thinking behind it and in particular the benefits to the originals and their history that may result.  For example, is Peter Jackson's recent excellent WW1 film They Shall Not Grow Old just "showmanship" or a legitimate attempt to modernise important historical footage for a new, 21st century audience?  As I have said we as lovers of times gone by can appreciate black & white pictures and films as windows to the past but to many [young] people it is as alien and as relevant as another planet - noiseless, colourless, oddly-dressed people long since dead.  If adding colour, realistic movement and other modern technological features can help get new generations more interested and perhaps lead them back to the unadulterated original, with a better understanding and appreciation of what it represents, it might well help to avoid further examples of photographic abandonment like those mentioned and ensure the endurance of classic early cinema and historic photographs such as those saved from oblivion by the likes of Peter Knight and others.

***What do you think?  Can film or photographs ever be over-restored?  Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.***

World's first colour film unveiled

World's first colour film unveiled 

In recent years early examples of colour film have, I think it's fair to say, become more established in the public consciousness thanks to their discovery, preservation and most importantly their showing on national television and in theatres.  I'm thinking of examples like Claude Friese-Greene's work in the 1920s (which was featured in the Dan Cruickshank series The Lost World of Friese-Greene on the B.B.C. back in 2006 having been expertly restored and preserved by that magnificient institution, the BFI) and the perennial film favourite that is the 1939 Wizard of Oz.



Colour cinematography was aspired to almost immediately after the moving picture camera was first invented but the technology needed to achieve it simply did not exist.  Many turn-of-the-century "colour" films consisted of each individual frame being hand-painted in order to provide the necessary effect.  The technique used by pioneering British cinematographer Edward Turner is generally agreed to be the first true colour film - and it was shot in 1902, fourteen years before the invention of Technicolor!  Alas Turner's method was a dead-end, he died suddenly a year later aged only 29 and his place in film history was forgotten.  Colourisation continued to progress, albeit slowly, and went on to provide some incredibly impressive and more advanced films (below, for example) but Turner was undoubtedly there first.



World's first colour film footage viewed for first time

Now thanks to the tireless efforts of the National Media Museum Turner's colour footage can be seen again for the first time in over 100 years just as he intended it to look.  Having been aware of the films' existence in their archives for some time and after working "behind the scenes", as it were(!), with the oddly-formatted reels the museum's curators were finally able to restore the stock and transfer it to the screen minus the imperfections that curtailed its development.  The result, as you can see in the first clip, is beautiful.

The team at the NMM are to be congratulated for persevering with the preservation of this historically important first step in colour cinematography, which will hopefully restore Edward Turner to his rightful place in the annals of moving picture history.  Colourisation of moving pictures made at a time when most film stock was black-and-white always imbues the subject with a remarkable sense of immediacy but to see colour footage from over a century ago is truly extraordinary and I am so very pleased to see it saved for future generations (not to mention proving to be a talking point in today's media).