THE FIRST WORLD WAR IN COLOUR: 320 Rare Colored Photos of the “War to End All Wars”

The First World War in Colour…get to see the unfolding of the ‘war to end all wars’ in full-colored photographs.

Black-and-white photos of the First World War are not that hard to find as it was the norm in the world of photography in that era. However, fully-hued photos were a rare find. And 320 of these rare pictures in full color are featured in the book compilation entitled The First World War in Colour.

The photos in The First World War in Colour were compiled from the archives of the UNited States, Australia and Europe. All the photographs included in the said book were taken by a band of photographers, pioneers of the autochrome technology, when  WWI started.

Way back in 1914, employing the autochrome technology meant a long process as the photos taken needed to have a considerable exposure time. That is why, most of the pictures inside the covers of The First World War in Colour accentuate painstakingly composed scenes of soldiers readying for battle, the everyday life in the trenches as well as the devastating aftermath of the war.

These exceptional, fully-hued photos in The First World War in Colour make the ‘war to end all wars’ appear more realistic to those who check its pages.

Pictures of some of the most important development during the First World War – like the mobilization in 1914 and the victory celebrations in various key cities like Paris, New York and London after the war ended – can be found within the volume authored by Peter Walther.

The production of The First World War in Colour is in time for the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War.

Autochrome Technology History

The autochrome technology was patented by the Lumière brothers in 1903 and came into the market in 1907. However, using it was a bit difficult and expensive in those times. Amateur photographers who employed the technique also had to sacrifice the flexibility that ‘black-and-white’ snapshooting afforded them.

With the 1930s came the dawn of subtractive color film putting colored photography into the mainstream.