30 Colorized Vintage Photos By Sebastien De Oliveira Might Transform Your View Of History (New Pics)

Bored Panda once again reached out to Sebastien, who kindly answered our questions about colorizing vintage photos.

Sebastien shared what inspired him to specialize in this craft, considering the enduring popularity of black-and-white photography. “I will always love the black and white photography, I practiced the print in my youth and I loved it. I discovered the fascination of colorization late in my life and what is so addictive for me is the time-traveling effect, how a colorized photo can make you live the experience of observing an image in a different way, closer to our own lives. I love the challenge of finding harmony between the choices of colors, the lighting effects, and the interaction between the colors. The game is infinite,” wrote the artist.

Sebastien also described his creative process when approaching a new project like colorizing images from the 1924 Olympic Games for his recent book and exhibition.

“My book is about Paris in the twenties and I must say that I took it as a challenge because my favorite period of time for coloring was the ’40s or the ’50s. My first book Back to America was all about the saturation of the technicolor and sometimes the exaggeration of vivid colors. For the second and for the Olympic Games project, I needed to change my color chart. I had less references for my own town than for the American images! I had to adapt my color palette to this era. I calmed down the saturation and found some more subtle ways to colorize. Maybe more realistic but without betraying my love for vivid colors,” explained Sebastien.

Sebastien also commented on the topic of ensuring historical accuracy while adding color to old photographs.

He wrote: “I would not say that I search for historical accuracy because it is quite a vain search, I prefer the concept of credibility, I make choices trying to give you the impression that it was the right one. I looked at the autochromes in particular, searching for inspiration, as well as paintings and drawings from the period. It is difficult to find confirmation of a choice, what you find is more a range of possibilities but you always need to assume your choices.”

We were wondering what challenges Sebastien has faced in digitally enhancing these vintage images, and how he overcomes them to maintain the integrity of the original photographs.

“The bigger job in the process can be to clean and restore the old images before beginning to colorize them, it gives me plenty of time to think about the colors. The second biggest challenge is to choose the color of the clothes because it’s the main interrogation we can find. A crowd will be more difficult but maybe only because it will be longer to work on,” wrote Sebastien.

Sebastien’s work often bridges the gap between artistry and historical preservation. We asked the artist to share how he balances artistic interpretation with the need to respect the authenticity of the original scenes he colorizes.

“I give myself a lot of freedom working on images as I can crop some parts or change the contrast of the black and white images, I think of the image as a raw material I can work as I want because the result will be my own interpretation, my version of the original, as someone can make a film from a book and feel free to change some parts.

I don’t consider my colorized photo better as the original, the original is still available and I didn’t replace the original with my version. So I prefer thinking of my colorization as a reconstruction of a certain reality and, because I see them also as paintings, I want them to be seen also as an art piece. The balance between the artistic and the credibility as color photo is something challenging to achieve, I am always trying new ways to find it.”