"World War II, including the Warsaw Uprising, is black and white for us. That's how photos and films from that period are remembered, that's our past from several decades ago. Although color films existed back then, they were difficult to access, especially in wartime Warsaw. I am convinced that if the insurgent reporters could, they would document events and capture everyday life in color," explains Chris Niedenthal in the introduction to the album.
The Warsaw Uprising is commonly associated with black-and-white images. The photos presented in the album have been colorized. "It makes a big difference, as everything looks different in color. I know that many photographers, including myself in the past, believe that colorizing black-and-white photos is not a good idea. However, today colorization can be done subtly and well, without giving it a Disney-like appearance," explained Niedenthal in an interview with PAP.
The album featuring colorized photos from the events of 1944 was published by the Warsaw Uprising Museum and the State Publishing Institute. The photographs are accompanied by texts from historian and film scholar Grzegorz Sołtysiak.
"The colorization process took almost a year," confirmed Jan Ołdakowski, director of the Warsaw Uprising Museum. "We didn't want to use artificial intelligence for colorization, which could easily do it, but wouldn't provide credible colors of the uprising," he added, explaining that the authors of the album aimed for the photos to be as realistic as possible and to accurately depict the original colors of the buildings and insurgents' clothing.
"We wanted to bring that world from the past, from black and white," emphasized Ołdakowski.
For the Warsaw Uprising Museum, a significant importance is placed on the colorized photograph of a young insurgent holding the "Flash Gordon" comic book, which is soon to be reprinted.
Chris Niedenthal, who curated the selection of exceptional photographs for the album "Color of the Uprising," is the author of the famous photograph that became a symbol of martial law in Poland. In December 1981, the photographer unveiled to the world the iconic image displayed on the screens of Kino Moskwa featuring Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now".
Source: PAP
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