How can I vote a news down? Because this isn't "news". I've seen it two years ago. Really great pictures, but no news ...
Russia in color, a century ago
91–100 of 196 posts
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#92This makes me realized how amazing it will be having tools like Instagram, having captured millions of photos, in around 100 years from now.
I have mixed feelings about that. Millions of recent GPS tagged photographs floating around in the cloud have some incredibly cool technical potential when combined with something like PhotoSynth, but culturally I think ubiquitous photos actually weaken the historical impact. To loosely stick with the Russian theme, a peek into a single moment in the life one person 100 years ago is fascinating, but a million peeks i…
Will all these Instagram pictures be there in 100 years? What happens if Instagram shuts down?
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very difficult to hold a smile very, very precisely. Any movement would've meant the colors would smudge. Not necessarily the reason why they're not smiling, but it's a possibility, I believe.
Agreed, but holding any pose is a challenge - kids sitting on the hill - they'd fidget and move. The water moves. The sun moves if you wait long enough. I wonder how many 'bad' photos there are from the early days of photos where people tried smiling and they had smudged faces.
I see a ghost in the smallest kid apart from the others in the hill. Changed positions between filters.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#94No one is smiling. Not even the kids. Maybe the woman in #20 is, who knows? I know in general 'old time' photos didn't have people smiling much - very posed pictures and stoic expressions. I wonder if they had any idea how much this would color our impression of them 100+ years later?
Russians don't walk around smiling, unless something good happens to smile about. In fact, smiling Americans look stupid grinning all the time.
Americans don't walk around being sad, unless something bad happens to be sad about. In fact, sad Russians look stupid wearing sad-face all the time.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think smiling for a photograph must be some sort of social training that humans either take to or don't. I, for example, still find it very difficult and unnatural to smile for photographs unless I am already smiling about something else and the picture is just a candid moment caught at that time. I would imagine that this old picture taking process (3 separate pictures with different filters each time) took quite…
It is probably a strange thing to say (i.e. common knowledge for others), but it only recently occurred to me that people develop a standard pose for photos. If you look at a family album or say Facebook or Flickr, and scroll through historic photos, the most "photogenic" people look almost identical. Those people will face in a certain direction with the same shape of smile and posture, it's almost freaky how identi…
Early photos had very long exposures, with clamps used to hold people still. That may have set the expected look for a long time later.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#96These are so amazing. The world wasn't sepia toned a hundred years ago! As silly as that statement is, my brain is actually having a hard time really believing these photos are from 100 years ago. I'm in awe.
I saw a hi-res version of this film two days ago http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeF4HXCq5z0. It was almost anachronical. Low res. jittery black and white movies makes everything look obsolete.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#97If you enjoyed those and don't know who Albert Kahn is, you should also check out:
http://www.albertkahn.co.uk/photos.html
http://www.albertkahn.co.uk/about.html
There's a small museum in Paris dedicated to his work (situated on the grounds of Kahn's old estate no less) which is a wonderful experience if you're ever in Paris and looking for something cultural to do that's a bit off the beaten track. It's on the end of the metro line and is an oasis of calm compared to the typical Louvre pandemonium :)
Edit: found the link to the museum: http://albert-kahn.hauts-de-seine.net/english/
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#98I've always found it interesting that people's perception of history is coloured(couldn't resist) by having only seen it in black and white. You almost have to remember that the world wasn't actually in black and white 100 years ago. It's fascinating to see photos from that far back in colour, it somehow makes it easier to empathise with the people in the shots.
Another good one is seeing ancient Greek and Roman statues in the colors they had and not just dull, white marble
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/multimedia/photos/?device=andr...
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#99No one is smiling. Not even the kids. Maybe the woman in #20 is, who knows? I know in general 'old time' photos didn't have people smiling much - very posed pictures and stoic expressions. I wonder if they had any idea how much this would color our impression of them 100+ years later?
The amount of smiling varies a lot between cultures, you can't correlate smiling with levels of happiness. Russians are known for not being big on smiling http://blog.properrussian.com/2011/05/why-russians-are-not-s... . From that article: >> There is a popular Russian saying, “A laughter without a reason is a sign of stupidity”
There is a popular Russian saying, “A laughter without a reason is a sign of stupidity”
I'd read this, and spent a couple weeks in Russia last fall, and noticed the lack of smiling a lot when I was there. The thing that struck me about that mindset, and particularly that phrase (and others like it) is that it presumes the person looking at me knows if I have a reason to smile/laugh or not.
There's no doubt a lot of layers in the thinking that produced that (and similar) phrases which I can't unravel or fathom, but it's still strange all the same. To presume someone is stupid if you see them laughing is certain a cultural thing. Here (US) we'd probably just assume they were happy.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#100These are so amazing. The world wasn't sepia toned a hundred years ago! As silly as that statement is, my brain is actually having a hard time really believing these photos are from 100 years ago. I'm in awe.
So goes the joke: "Dad, why are there only black-and-white photos from before the early 1900s?" "Because you see, son, the world actually was black-and-white back then." "Then why were there colour portraits?" "Because you see, son, artists were insane."
^ Calvin and Hobbes