I don't much care for colorized photos although the net and certain publications, like Andy Saunders' dreadful 'Iron Cross' magazine are full of them. Ordinarily 'Iron Cross' would be a decent read, but page after page is given over to 'colorised' pics - the 'colouriser' is even referred to as the 'artist'. 'Colourised' images are most likely created to be more 'accessible' and 'relatable' to a 'modern' audience. The risk is that they become the more widely distributed and looked-at version of the image. The original fades away into obscurity. It's the 'colorised' shot that gets re-scanned and re-distributed. But who knows whether the 'coloriser' has got the details right? He almost certainly hasn't. And everywhere you go on social media you come across a myriad examples of colorized images in varying degrees of quality. Some enthusiasts seem to be very positive about this while others are totally negative.
" ..I absolutely hate these kind of forgeries. A photograph is a document and colorizing it after the fact should be always treated as a forgery..."..
I find myself agreeing with that statement - basically 'colorizing' images amounts to nothing less than falsifying history. It's fraud, it's deception. 'Colorisation' can be inaccurate and misleading. Images like the two that follow also show that - at first glance - it is getting to the point where its impossible to tell what is 'real' and what isn't. Of course if you know what you are looking at, then you know what's wrong in the Fw 190 image below! The colour of the aircraft codes is wrong! But why let 'facts' get in the way..That said, people have been tampering with and colorizing images since the war..We only have to look at the sort of material that appeared in Signal to see how important manipulating color images were to those 'selling' (Nazi) propaganda. At its worst 'colorisation' has been described as 'a negligent falsification of history that sacrifices memory and truth..' All for a few nice colours. Something for the editor of 'Iron Cross' to bear in mind, but of course there's money to be made by publishing entire booklets full of colorised images!
Gefechtsverband Kuhlmey from the SA-KUVA archive. Fw 190 Jabo is being prepared for a new mission, Stukas are returning, Immola July 1944 and crash-landed Yak -9. Should be white Kennung (thanks GRM!) on this 4./JG 54 machine...
Also on this blog;
Generalleutnant Hans Seidemann and the Yak-3 - "Unbekannte Pflicht" Walter Wolfrum (296 Verlag)
https://falkeeins.blogspot.com/2017/08/generalleutnant-hans-seidemann-and-yak.html
Actual colour images are already 'under attack' from the atmosphere around them. This well-known picture looks 'different' every time it is published..
