Mario Unger, an Austrian digital artist has colorized a series of old photographs of famous people, and they look amazing! It took Unger 3,000 hours of careful and detailed work to retouch this vast collection of historical photographs. The aim of this work was to reduce the time distance between those personalities and eras they come from, and modern times. Unger says he loves black and white photography, but some photos simply crave color and the only reason why they don’t have it is the fact that back in the days, the colored film did not exist.
Unger says he loves how retouching images and giving them color transports feelings from the past into the present and says this can only be done with “real” colors. He chose photographs of portraits of Hollywood movie stars, scientists, painters, and other artists, like for example the first known female tattoo artist in the U.S.
It is visible from his photographs how the persons on them really seem alive and the time gap is almost crossed with color – you could easily imagine passing by any of these characters on the street.
In the pictures that follow we chose some of Unger’s retouched photographs and we hope you like them.
