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Wow, I never would've thought this would be an issue - If more people knew of how the past looked like, and could relate to it, and understand - they would be

Wow, I never would've thought this would be an issue - If more people knew of how the past looked like, and could relate to it, and understand - they would be shocked at the world we have today. Especially since most people can not relate to black and white videos/photos because they don't have the context required to expand on that thought. They just see an exposure, thats a photo, enlarged and think "that's it." Even, ironically, there's the expression/meme that kids/younger generation thought "the past wasn't in color." I remember hearing this when I was a kid in school, during the 90's and 00's. From the article...: "That’s not a view many academics hold, however. Luke McKernan, lead curator of news and moving images at the British Library, was particularly scathing about Peter Jackson’s 2018 World War One documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, which upscaled and colourised footage from the Western Front. Making the footage look more modern, he argued, undermined it. “It is a nonsense,” he wrote. “Colourisation does not bring us closer to the past; it increases the gap between now and then. It does not enable immediacy; it creates difference.” But on the flipside, this argument does bring to light why it may be bad, but still - I don't think it's good enough to be up in arms about someone upscaling archive footage. "For Mark-FitzGerald and other historians of photography tools like DeOldify and Neural Love might make pictures look amazing, but they risk obscuring the past rather than illuminating it. “Even as a photo historian, I look at them and think, oh, wow, that's quite an arresting image,” she says. “But always then my next impulse is to say, 'Well, why am I having that response? And what is the person who's made this intervention on the restoration actually doing? What information has this person added? What have they taken away?”

claudeganon 6y ago
> Especially since most people can not relate to black and white videos/photos because they don't have the context required to expand on that thought. Can anyone expand on this sentiment? I’ve heard it expressed, especially around movies, but it’s always been incomprehensible to me. What is it about being black and white that makes it unrelatable?
- gadders 6y ago
  I thought it was silly as well. But then I bought a copy of The Colour of Time [1]. I don't know why it makes a difference, but it definitely does (at least for me). Obviously, your mileage may vary. [1] https://marinamaral.com/books/the-colour-of-time-a-new-history-of-the-world-1850-1960/ https://marinamaral.com/books/the-colour-of-time-a-new-histo...
- rootsudo 6y ago
  Look at old photos, and then take a current photo, something you understand and make it black and white, and resize it. You'll immediately will understand how your senses help "add" thought, context, feelings, emotion behind it. It can be anything, a road w/ houses, a car, a portrait of a person at a famous sight. That. That's the sentiment.
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  I struggle to believe that the Afghan girl picture would have been anywhere near as popular as it was/is if it was B&W https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Girl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Girl
  - prionassembly 6y ago
    But this is because of strange racial issues. Americans expect "Muslims" to all be uniformly brown (I remember circa 9/11 the slur "sand n#$%r" was common) , but Afghans and Iranians have whiter skin and often eyes that are not black. And then we decode that as "this is beauty and it's surprising that there is beauty among these people".
- arp242 6y ago
  When all the images you see from a certain time period are captured in a certain way (black and white, in this case) then it's easy to imagine that this is also how the people at the time perceived it, which of course isn't the case at all. I wouldn't call it "unrelatable" as such, but adding colour – even if not completely accurate – certainly gives me a better impression of how people at the time saw things, and it becomes more relatable. Black and white can certainly be used for fantastic artistic intent in e.g. movies, by the way. But for these kind of historical records that's not what was going on; it was just a technological limitation at the time.
fao_ 6y ago
> Even, ironically, there's the expression/meme that kids/younger generation thought "the past wasn't in color." I remember hearing this when I was a kid in school, during the 90's and 00's. http://www.scpwiki.com/scp-8900-ex http://www.scpwiki.com/scp-8900-ex :)
tgv 6y ago
> Colourisation does not bring us closer to the past; it increases the gap between now and then. It does not enable immediacy; it creates difference. This really makes me wonder. How does it increase the gap, in comparison to B&W pictures? How is the difference not there already? And why is that bad? So I checked the source of that quote, and there is no argumentation. None. And (IMO), the whole point of "They shall not Grow Old" is that something like WW1 can happen again, and you, yes, you personally, will suffer if it does. Everyone has to realize that the people in that old footage are just like you and me, and Peter Jackson's film manages to effectively bridge the gap that blurry, jittery, B&W footage has, precisely by making it look recent.
- brownbat 6y ago
  > So I checked the source of that quote, and there is no argumentation. None. Yeah, these quotes all seem like ad lapidem, just unsupported vague claims. I'm not even sure I agree people can be "closer" or "farther" from the past when looking at an image, it's a poetic way to look at the difference but not precise, and seems like it would evaporate if we tried to find any quantifiable measurable effects.
- ardy42 6y ago
  >> Colourisation does not bring us closer to the past; it increases the gap between now and then. It does not enable immediacy; it creates difference. > This really makes me wonder. How does it increase the gap, in comparison to B&W pictures? How is the difference not there already? And why is that bad? Probably because the colorization can be misleading. With a B&W images, it's clear the color data is missing. With a colorized photo, a red building could be shown as blue or gray, and someone could leave with the false understanding the the building was really a different color than it actually was.
  - monkpit 6y ago
    How does that increase the gap exactly?
- redisman 6y ago
  I can't believe they're shitting on "They shall not Grow Old". The whole point of it was to give an emotional and immersive experience of one of the worst wars humanity has seen to modern audiences. There can be other goals than absolute historial accuracy. All Quiet on the Western Front is one of my favorite books and not because it's the most exhaustive and accurate history of WW I.
Freak_NL 6y ago
> What information has this person added? What have they taken away? That bit is quite relevant. These upscaled videos are interesting, but most people watching them won't know what was there originally and what was added through interpretation and extrapolation. The colours in particular are tricky and not likely to always reflect reality very well, and any sounds added seem to be an amateur's best guesses using what's available in audio libraries mostly. But it is not just the present-day processing of the material; as Mark-FitzGerald notes, photographs and videos from that age were taken with an objective in mind which may not be as neutral as one might assume. It's not always straight-up propaganda, but whoever took the pictures (or paid for them) had their motives as well. That is part of the context that you need to fully understand what you are seeing (and what you are not seeing), and which is understandably missing from Youtube.
- mannykannot 6y ago
  It is unclear to me how viewing the originals, as opposed to these derived works, gives you any greater insight into the motives of those who made them. The only corner-case I can think of is the erasure of obvious signs of faking, but that does not seem to be the issue that people are getting worked up over. Is anyone even wasting their effort on upscaling faked film?
  - monkpit 6y ago
    I think it’s so strange to see all of the arguments saying “if this building is colored as gray instead of blue, then it is making it harder to understand the past”. A layperson does not care about the exact color of a building or a jacket or a hat, and if it is really that important then it’s probably documented somewhere. It might be important to historians and that is ok. But they are not the intended audience of these type of upscaled/colorized clips.
mannykannot 6y ago
It is as if Luke McKernan has been so immersed in the original film for so long that he now mistakes it for reality. And viewing old film at the wrong speed is the opposite of an authentic experience.
bufferoverflow 6y ago
> I never would've thought this would be an issue It isn't. 1) historians have no power over random people colorizing, upscaling and frame interpolating some old videos for fun 2) it's not "historians", it's actually a tiny minority of vocal historians who want this to be a problem

claudeganon 6y ago

> Especially since most people can not relate to black and white videos/photos because they don't have the context required to expand on that thought. Can anyone expand on this sentiment? I’ve heard it expressed, especially around movies, but it’s always been incomprehensible to me. What is it about being black and white that makes it unrelatable?

gadders 6y ago
I thought it was silly as well. But then I bought a copy of The Colour of Time [1]. I don't know why it makes a difference, but it definitely does (at least for me). Obviously, your mileage may vary. [1] https://marinamaral.com/books/the-colour-of-time-a-new-history-of-the-world-1850-1960/ https://marinamaral.com/books/the-colour-of-time-a-new-histo...
rootsudo 6y ago
Look at old photos, and then take a current photo, something you understand and make it black and white, and resize it. You'll immediately will understand how your senses help "add" thought, context, feelings, emotion behind it. It can be anything, a road w/ houses, a car, a portrait of a person at a famous sight. That. That's the sentiment.
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
I struggle to believe that the Afghan girl picture would have been anywhere near as popular as it was/is if it was B&W https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Girl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Girl
- prionassembly 6y ago
  But this is because of strange racial issues. Americans expect "Muslims" to all be uniformly brown (I remember circa 9/11 the slur "sand n#$%r" was common) , but Afghans and Iranians have whiter skin and often eyes that are not black. And then we decode that as "this is beauty and it's surprising that there is beauty among these people".
arp242 6y ago
When all the images you see from a certain time period are captured in a certain way (black and white, in this case) then it's easy to imagine that this is also how the people at the time perceived it, which of course isn't the case at all. I wouldn't call it "unrelatable" as such, but adding colour – even if not completely accurate – certainly gives me a better impression of how people at the time saw things, and it becomes more relatable. Black and white can certainly be used for fantastic artistic intent in e.g. movies, by the way. But for these kind of historical records that's not what was going on; it was just a technological limitation at the time.

fao_ 6y ago

> Even, ironically, there's the expression/meme that kids/younger generation thought "the past wasn't in color." I remember hearing this when I was a kid in school, during the 90's and 00's. http://www.scpwiki.com/scp-8900-ex http://www.scpwiki.com/scp-8900-ex :)

tgv 6y ago

> Colourisation does not bring us closer to the past; it increases the gap between now and then. It does not enable immediacy; it creates difference. This really makes me wonder. How does it increase the gap, in comparison to B&W pictures? How is the difference not there already? And why is that bad? So I checked the source of that quote, and there is no argumentation. None. And (IMO), the whole point of "They shall not Grow Old" is that something like WW1 can happen again, and you, yes, you personally, will suffer if it does. Everyone has to realize that the people in that old footage are just like you and me, and Peter Jackson's film manages to effectively bridge the gap that blurry, jittery, B&W footage has, precisely by making it look recent.

brownbat 6y ago
> So I checked the source of that quote, and there is no argumentation. None. Yeah, these quotes all seem like ad lapidem, just unsupported vague claims. I'm not even sure I agree people can be "closer" or "farther" from the past when looking at an image, it's a poetic way to look at the difference but not precise, and seems like it would evaporate if we tried to find any quantifiable measurable effects.
ardy42 6y ago
>> Colourisation does not bring us closer to the past; it increases the gap between now and then. It does not enable immediacy; it creates difference. > This really makes me wonder. How does it increase the gap, in comparison to B&W pictures? How is the difference not there already? And why is that bad? Probably because the colorization can be misleading. With a B&W images, it's clear the color data is missing. With a colorized photo, a red building could be shown as blue or gray, and someone could leave with the false understanding the the building was really a different color than it actually was.
- monkpit 6y ago
  How does that increase the gap exactly?
redisman 6y ago
I can't believe they're shitting on "They shall not Grow Old". The whole point of it was to give an emotional and immersive experience of one of the worst wars humanity has seen to modern audiences. There can be other goals than absolute historial accuracy. All Quiet on the Western Front is one of my favorite books and not because it's the most exhaustive and accurate history of WW I.

Freak_NL 6y ago

> What information has this person added? What have they taken away? That bit is quite relevant. These upscaled videos are interesting, but most people watching them won't know what was there originally and what was added through interpretation and extrapolation. The colours in particular are tricky and not likely to always reflect reality very well, and any sounds added seem to be an amateur's best guesses using what's available in audio libraries mostly. But it is not just the present-day processing of the material; as Mark-FitzGerald notes, photographs and videos from that age were taken with an objective in mind which may not be as neutral as one might assume. It's not always straight-up propaganda, but whoever took the pictures (or paid for them) had their motives as well. That is part of the context that you need to fully understand what you are seeing (and what you are not seeing), and which is understandably missing from Youtube.

mannykannot 6y ago
It is unclear to me how viewing the originals, as opposed to these derived works, gives you any greater insight into the motives of those who made them. The only corner-case I can think of is the erasure of obvious signs of faking, but that does not seem to be the issue that people are getting worked up over. Is anyone even wasting their effort on upscaling faked film?
- monkpit 6y ago
  I think it’s so strange to see all of the arguments saying “if this building is colored as gray instead of blue, then it is making it harder to understand the past”. A layperson does not care about the exact color of a building or a jacket or a hat, and if it is really that important then it’s probably documented somewhere. It might be important to historians and that is ok. But they are not the intended audience of these type of upscaled/colorized clips.

mannykannot 6y ago

It is as if Luke McKernan has been so immersed in the original film for so long that he now mistakes it for reality. And viewing old film at the wrong speed is the opposite of an authentic experience.

bufferoverflow 6y ago

> I never would've thought this would be an issue It isn't. 1) historians have no power over random people colorizing, upscaling and frame interpolating some old videos for fun 2) it's not "historians", it's actually a tiny minority of vocal historians who want this to be a problem