The End Of A Black-And-White World: Color Photography
10.09.06By Derek DahlsadThe old joke, told by many a grandparent or parent, says that the world was black-and-white until color photography was invented. The advent of recording colored light, storing it for the ages, was the beginning of a world of color, one where greens and blues are distinguishable from shades of gray.
Many a child then took it for granted, before thinking a bit harder about the concept of a colorless history. For most people born since the 1970s, black and white film is only used as an artistic statement; color is the way everything is seen. Even people approaching retirement age remember color film always being around, with black and white 
a limitation of technology or expense. Few realize just how recent color photography came into being.
While many inventors and photographers experimented with color photos, going back into the 19th century, widespread color film became available in the mid-1930s when Kodachrome, Technicolor, and Agfacolor films were released. While the availability and simplicity of these films were greatly improved over earlier attempts at color photos, they still had a degree of complexity and expense that kept black-and-white as a common film well into the 1960s.
As such, finding color photos made during those twenty years is a rare event. The average photographer did not have the equipment, skill, or access to developing as professionals did. When photographers were sent with the troops during WWII, numerous striking color photos were returned, even today drawing enormous attention from generations raised on grainy black-and-white newsreels. A single arbitrary photo from 1949 garnished significant attention from bloggers and historians when it turned up on Wikipedia (at right, above). Many of these photos originated with professionals, both the negatives and prints being guarded carefully for profitable reasons, but many amateurs dabbled in color as well.
I, for example, own a rare example of a 1939 amateur color film. While most of the other films in the AOUW collection were 
16mm black and white, the enterprising documenters decided to load their camera (or cameras; some parts seem to have been filmed with two cameras) with the new Kodachrome “Kodak Safety Positive” film. Large portions of this film, particularly the interstitials, were done on black-and-white film and spliced in where color was unavailable or impratical.
During the 1930s and 1940s, color movies brought images of New York, Hollywood, and other distant lands to moviehouses everywhere, but color photos of off-the-beaten-path areas like North Dakota, Montana, Texas, and Iowa are a rare treat. Even though color photos were rare, many photographers tried their hand at this new form of photography, and their works appeared many places, from postcards to books to magazines. National Geographic was an early deliverer of color images to a world full of black-and-white photos, but magazine prints are a far reach from an actual photograph.
Color printing presses were a bit ahead of modern color film, with National Geographic starting to print full-color magazines in the 1920s from early color photographs. Because it was much easier to reproduce numerous color images on a printing press than through photographic methods, distinguishing between a photograph and a 4-color print or lithograph is necessary.
With printing processes, a color separation process is used which divides up a color image into numerous “dithered” dots. Most people can distinguish these dots with the naked eye, but extremely fine detail can require a magnifying glass. Also, most printers or lithographers, to protect their copyright, included their name and city of origin in the margins of a print, or on the back. In the case of re-framed prints, sometimes these margins have trimmed to fit. Color photos will often be printed on a heavy cardstock, and have a coating on the front which may range from a light gloss to a thick glossy layer. Often a professional photographer would mark or stamp their name on the back of a photo to identify themselves. Cycleback.com has an excellent list of resources for identifying genuine photos, with a special area on color photos.
Negatives, on the other hand, are easily authenticatable, but rarely survive. Color negatives from the 1970s are already turning pink (a common degradation for color negatives), and ones earlier are experiencing the same shift. This color shift, if it has not gone too far, can be corrected using modern computer technology. Color prints, as well, are susceptible to color shift due to age. As such, care should be taken to store original color photos and negatives in dark, climate-controlled areas in order to prolong their life. Displaying colorfast early photographs (primarily ones using the Kodachrome process, like my movie) is not a bad thing as long as direct sunlight is avoided, but a modern reproduction of a fading antique color photo can be just as eye-catching. Because we so rarely see color photos of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, few people will complain about seeing a reproduction on display. Connoisseurs of photography understand the rarity and value of old color images, and would rather see these striking photos cared for.
