Lewis Powell hanged in 1865 for his part in the plot to kill United States president Abraham Lincoln. [Photo provided to China Daily]

How colorization has breathed new life into black and white history

In the modern world of social media, photosharing, and celebrity, sharing an image of an executed murder plotter from 1865 may sound like a strange thing to do, but that was the unlikely starting point for what has turned out to be one of the biggest publishing hits of the year.

The photo in question was an image of Lewis Powell, hanged in 1865 for his part in the plot to kill United States president Abraham Lincoln, and when photo colorist Marina Amaral digitally colored the picture and shared it, the response was overwhelming.

Two years later, she has now collaborated with English historian Dan Jones to produce The Colour of Time: A New History of the World, 1850-1960, chronicling world events through recolorized versions of black and white photos, and radically transforming readers' understanding and appreciation of some of the most important events and people in world history.

"That picture was remarkable – you'd think he was a model posing in GQ magazine, or something," said Jones. "As soon as I saw it, I thought 'who on earth is doing this, I have to find out'. I messaged Marina, who turned out to be in Brazil, and one of the first things I said to her was 'when are you doing a book?' and then I told my publishers, Head of Zeus. I knew instantly that this was something we had to be involved in, what she was doing was so revolutionary and perfect for our photo-obsessed time."

Amaral is self-taught, having got involved with colorizing photos from the standpoint of being a history enthusiast rather than a photographer, and says carefully researched, respectful colorization of photos has transformed them and opened up their stories to a whole new audience.

"Black and white can definitely be a barrier to some people, it's much easier to relate to someone or something when you see them in color because they become more modern and more human," she explained. "That way, you realize that even though the photo may be from 100 years ago, in so many ways those people were no different to us."

Using thousands of photos predominantly from the Getty Archive, and also others in the public domain, Amaral and Jones managed to narrow things down to a collection of 200 photos dating back to the earliest days of mass photography, to tell a new history of the modern world, in a book that has proved to be hugely popular with book buyers, reviewers, and historians alike.

Right from the outset, they were both determined to tell history in a slightly different way.

"So often, it's hard to tell a historical story accurately because, particularly when you're dealing with things like wars, too many of the images are just from one side," she explained. "It's definitely harder to achieve a balance between both sides, but that's what we wanted to do – and we also wanted to make sure it was a truly world view of history, not just looking at the usual European colonial or US-dominated view."

Jones said that another challenge they, and indeed all historians, faced was the changing nature of what was considered important and worthy of recording over the years.

"Some of the early photographs of the Crimean War in the 1850s look wonderful and are great documentary pictures, but they're all very bloodless and clean – they're pure propaganda, and it's the same with photos of the American Civil War when so many of the best photographers were all on the side of the Union forces," he said. "Also, because of the cost and technology involved, in the early days many photographs were of the rich and famous, because that's what people cared about. Now we're more interested in the history of the everyday and normal people's lives, and the further you go back, the harder it gets to find documentary records of any kind about these people."

Amaral and Jones were keen to ensure that their book was not just the same old story told from the same old point of view – and Jones says that writing it made even he, a well-known published historian and broadcaster, realize the limitations of his knowledge when it came to countries such as China. The book contains images of Mao Zedong and the Empress Dowager Cixi.

"It's so easy to write a European/US take on world history but we really wanted to make this book cover all cultures and nations, so from the point of view of images, that makes it more challenging as when you start to look at Asia and Africa, there are so few of them in comparison," he said."It also made me realize how ignorant we are of so much history from countries like China, apart from the last few decades.