1917 World War I In Color: A rare record of quiet on the Western Front

[MerryBlooms]

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In 1917, World War I was dragging into its fourth bloody year.

On the Western Front, mechanized warfare and a tactical stalemate had claimed millions of lives.

In January, a German telegram urging Mexico to go to war against the United States was intercepted, leading to the Americans’ entry into the conflict.

In April, a calamitous offensive at Chemin des Dames gained the French only 500 yards of territory at the cost of 250,000 casualties, leading to widespread mutiny and desertion.

1917 was also the tenth year that the Lumière brothers’ Autochrome color photography process was commercially available. One of the earliest color technologies, the Autochrome process, used microscopic grains of dyed potato starches to capture hues in a dreamy, pointillist mosaic.

http://mashable.com/2015/12/18/wwi-color-photos/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-retronaut-link#t32vU2INmkq3

[cwydro]

1. I'm a huge WW1 buff.

Thanks for posting!

[MerryBlooms]

2. y/w :) Isn't this a fascinating collection?

[cwydro]

3. It sure is.

Sharing it with my mom, who also loves any WW1 pics/history, etc.

[MerryBlooms]

5. Oh, good deal!

[Octafish]

4. Potato Starch.

Thanks to the Lumiere -- what a name! -- brothers, miraculous.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/01/150131-pictures-autochrome-color-photography-history-people-culture/

[MerryBlooms]

6. :)

[BlueJazz]

7. Whoa, I didn't know the French had 15 inch guns in 1917.

[edhopper]

8. Fascinating photos

though I am fairly certain they were colorized by computer.

[gregcrawford]

11. Actually, they are authentic...

... I read about the autochrome process years ago, and saw other examples that also had the same pointillist look imparted by the potato starch particles, and that was back in the sixties, before computer graphics were even imagined. I work in PhotoShop and Illustrator every day now, and I'm familiar with the various filters one can apply to an image achieve a given "artistic" look. I also remember doing paste-ups of hot lead type on clay-coated paper with rubber cement. Ah, the memories!

[edhopper]

12. then

I am doubly impressed.

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. Very cool...great post

The shell-ravaged area of West Flanders was probably at a third line trench (!), otherwise they wouldn't be sunning themselves. Still, look at that dug-out.

Also, very good images to show the complete colonial nature of the Great War. Algerians, Senegalese, Indochine. And that's just a sampling. The Western Front was a global event.

[pinboy3niner]

10. War vets have lots of photos of the quiet times

Not so much of the action because it wasn't their cameras they were shooting then.

I have photos of me in Vietnam in quiet times, together with friends...who were KIA later.

[murielm99]

13. Beautiful pictures.

Thank you.

I looked around a bit and found the pictures of the aftermath of the Great Chicago fire. Those were interesting, too.

[Bonhomme Richard]

14. I love shots like that but I wonder why the.......

didn't take some of the noise out of the photos.