The oddly coloured past
Welcome to the 71th edition of this newsletter!
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If you've been following this Mailing List for a while, you know that I typically don't send out so many emails. But I kept forgetting to share this picture with you.
I came across this picture when I was still active on Twitter. Someone had posted it and noted that there was the theory that the photo depicted Carleton Watkins. It's not clear whether this is actually correct; there was just a single source for that claim. Whoever this was, it seems fair to say that he really loved photography.
But wait, you might note, can't you simply use Google's Image Search to find out more? Well, sure.
This is an actual screenshot of what I got. Didn't order any of these pants, though.
Following up on my previous email, I started playing with photo AI again, this time with tools to colourize black-and-white photographs. I don't know why this fascinates me so much, especially given I think that it's a pretty terrible idea to colourize old images.
Somehow, I can't help but think that instead of bringing us closer to the past, it actually does the opposite, by presenting us with a simulation of the past that, in all likelihood, isn't quite what things looked like.
Regardless, I wondered what happened if I ran one of my own photographs through the machinery. I picked a picture from Vaterland and ran it through four different sites. The outcomes were all rather similar, which might or might not surprise you (if you really need to see this, you can check out my Instagram).
Then I thought I should simply look at the original photograph itself -- before I had converted it to black-and-white. Good idea. However, while the theorist and critic in me liked the idea, the resident photographer argued that it's not a good idea to put a colour version of any of the photographs from my book into the world. It just doesn't feel right.
However, the critic noted that the colourized version differed enough from the actual colour one to come to some conclusions. Both sides sat down over a beer and came to a compromise. Instead of using a photograph from my book, I picked an outtake from the project (I'm using the word somewhat loosely: the picture was never a serious contender for an edit).
Here's a picture that I took on the same day as one of the photos in the book (if you live in Berlin, you'll know):
I posted this picture on Instagram a day or two after I had taken it. I don't remember whether it's still up. It doesn't really matter.
So if you run this through Photomyne, what do you get? You get this:
This looks convincing, doesn't it?
I should note that given that all of the sites I tested produced roughly similar results, using just one for this test would be good enough.
Regardless, there's something strange about this "colour" picture, isn't there? The sky doesn't quite work: it's light blue and yet elsewhere it's light grey?
That aside, the whole picture looks like one of those colour photographs from back in the day, doesn't it? It would seem that instead of producing a colour photograph that reflects what you might see at the scene, the AI produces a colour photograph that looks like an old-timey colour photograph.
Check out the real colour version:
(In the interest of this exercise, I refrained from applying any of the changes that I'd ordinarily apply to my colour pictures.)
I think if you compare this photograph to AI colour one, you can see what I mean by the idea of the simulation. Instead of producing an accurate image, the AI appears to head towards... Yeah, towards what exactly?
This example is in line with the tests I did with images from Vaterland. In all cases, I got these somewhat uncanny colour pictures that weren't very believable. Or rather, they're believable to the extent that you want to believe them.
That is, after all, what drives so much of the colourization industry. Instead of aiming for accuracy, more often than not we're being presented with some cartoon version of something. And who would question the algorithms anyway once you see a colour photograph of, say, your grandfather that's based on one of your old black-and-white photographs?
The typically slightly muted colours cater to feelings of nostalgia and sadness: a sadness for a past never experienced or a person sadly never met. Except that in my particular case, there is no such nostalgia. I just remember taking a few photographs during a lunch break on a day where the grey sky made for great photo weather in Berlin.
The end of the year is just two weeks away. While there is some arbitrariness to the way calendars chops time into digestible chunks, taking a break to reflect also isn't such a bad idea.
I'd like to thank all of you for following along all these ideas, thoughts, and diversions that I've shared over the course of this year. I'm very grateful that you decided to read along.
I hope the rest of this year will be peaceful and quiet for you, and I hope you will have a great start into the New Year.
As always thank you for reading!
-- Jörg