Color Pictures From World War 1

[erkada]

I know this is off topic but I thought these were pretty cool. Found these at digg.com.

Photos are from the French government archives. At that time, color photography was still an experiment. The colors were obtained using dried potato grains! More old color photos at: http://www.greatwar.nl/kleur/kleur.html

http://www.network54.com/Forum/threa...;lp=1088381193

[NickTrop]

You haven't read many of these threads. Nothing is off-topic here. (I mean really, how much is there to say about a stupid camera?) Thanks for the links... will check them out soon (but not right now have a date with a dog who very much wants to play his latest favorite game-

"Slobberball": owner throws ratty old tennis ball. Dawg chases it and brings it back, repeat until owner gets bored or freezes to death (whatever comes first), then go back inside. He especially like to play this at night, in the snow, in sub-zero temps.

Ah, well, he's been "snipped" so he's entitled to some fun, anyhow. It's the least I can do.

See? No such thing as "off topic" here.

[SteveCz]

Ms/Mr Erkada,

I can't tell you how much I appreciate you posting the links to the French archive photos of WWI. I have a keen interest in WWI history and found the photos to be nothing short of incredible.

Steve C, Strazeele, France

[nooner]

Those pics are very interesting. Amazing how little we learn from war............on a lighter note. Here's one of my favorites from that collection

[NickTrop]

I like the pic that nooner posted, but my favorite is the first one of that WWI dude getting a haircut. 'mazin stuff. Brutal war, death toll something like 9 million worldwide as I recall. Thanks for the link.

[fmoore]

Fascinating stuff. Thanks for posting, erkada. The first link locks up my IE for some reason but I think I was able to work around that. I'd like to see that whole site. Maybe it was just too busy. The second link seemed to be more unretouched, less postcard type shots. I used to have an old WWI photo book full of b&w shots. The key word there was old. These color shots seem so much closer in time to now. Amazing.

[snook]

Some years back a friend asked me if I could reprint some WW1 photos, as I owned a darkroom. Turned out to be aerial recon photos of the battlefields. WOW! Wish I still had copies,,,,,,,,,,

Yea, we learn NOTHING! (I am Vietnam Vet)

[NickTrop]

snook wrote:

Yea, we learn NOTHING! (I am Vietnam Vet)

N-n-n-n-no. YOU learned. Many "learned" because YOU, as Vets, bore the pain of the experience collectively in countless horrible physical and psychological ways, as a Vet who served on the battlefield. Those making the decisions? They're the ones who never learned. War is an abstraction to them, a means to an end - and in every case, that end is the promotion of a religious or political ideology that stands on neutral relative ground to "competing" religious and political ideologies. (And, "careful" if you don't think they're neutral, or that the ideological, philosophical, or religious bucket that you happend to have fallen in as an accident of birth is "superior".) Of course, they'll always say it's justified for other reasons - fanning the flames, and pushing the buttons through propaganda. That part is almost too easy. War is a harsh reality to you, but merely an abstraction and a means to an end to them... always.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century (1993)
"Lives deliberately extinguished by politically motivated carnage":
167,000,000 to 175,000,000
Including:
War Dead: 87,500,000
Military war dead:
33,500,000
Civilian war dead:
54,000,000

Think we would learn? Me thinks not. Just turn on your tv - this weekend in particular, to witness the answer first hand.

This isn't off-topic to me. Photo's effect everyone differently. A photo of an old man that you just glance at, might cause that old man's widow to weep. You see "noise in the low contrast areas". The widow sees a picture of dead husband, and the perception of the photo is greeted with a lifetime of memories. We see photos ( indeed all objects but photos are among the objects with the most impact) through our own individual prism. Two people don't see the same photo differently, they see different photos. Does NickTrop competently mediocre chess player see the same chess board as Viswanathan Anand? No, a Grand Master sees "moves" that are invisible to me. [/i]He doesn't see the chess board differently from me; he literally sees a different board. (Much about God, pick one, can be understood if one can grasp the symantically subtle but enormous distinction between seeing things differently and seeing different things...) We all live in different realities, creation is as much a product of the mind, as the collection of objects and situations, external.

Did that guy taking a leak ever get to see his sweetie again? Did the guy getting a haircut ever get to see his family again? That is, were they able to live out their natural lives as God intended? Or, were their lives extinguished, unnaturally, as Satan would have intended? This is the meta-nature - or structure, of good and evil. And our nature seems to suggest that - ultimately, there can only be one dominate, collective perception of reality, which can only exist be extinguishing others. If this is true, than Man is an evil creature indeed.

These photos ask a question of me, were those subjects in these very old photos among the 167,000,000 to 175,000,000 "lives deliberately extinguished by politically motivated carnage" during the century? To the idealoges the 100's of millions of war dead were perceived as "collateral damage". Do you share this reality, and live in their world?

--- that's the prism through which I see these old war photos. And that's also why "we never learn". We never learn, because WE never learn.

[willow1]

WOW...very interesting photos indeed....

and Nick you amaze me :Gthe info king...them numbers are staggering to say the least.......Great Great stuff !!!!!