A small handful of colourized images taken of Vancouver soldiers from the First and Second world wars now offer a revitalized glimpse at the past.
While an early form of colour photography was employed during the First World War, it wasn’t a widespread technique by any means. Essentially, a combination of cost and complexity kept colour images exceedingly rare until around the 1950s. How most people saw photos from the war was in newspapers, which only started using colour photos in the 1980s. The combination of these factors made it so the most recognizable photos from the first and second wars are largely seen as black and white.
For a younger generation, those faded black and white photos can be less relatable, making them seem further back in history. However, thanks to the colourizing talents of Mark Truelove at Canadian Colour, a small handful of Vancouver images from that era have been brought to life.
The images Truelove colourized were taken from the City of Vancouver Archives. They include soldiers from the First World War waiting at a train station, writing letters to home and V.E. Day celebrations in 1945.
