Colour photos from 1909!
May. 9th, 2009 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tree_and_leafIncidentally: this week's "Church Times" has a fantastic feature on the 1909 "English Church Pageant", an open-air theatrical production telling the history of the English (and, apparently, bits of the Scottish) church from, it has to be said, a very high church perspective, though one at pains to be as authentic as possible; Percy Dearmer was heavily involved, it was on this occasion that Athelstan Riley's fantastic and very Catholic hymn 'Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones' first came to public prominence, and GK Chesterton, who was still and Anglican, played Dr Johnson. The article's quite good in terms of contextualising it in terms of the - particularly ecclesiastical - concerns of its day and analysing it as a piece of popular historiography from the pre-television era.
However, the most striking thing about it is that the article is illustrated with genuine colour photographs - direct colour, not colourised by painting later. From 1909. As such, it gives a very vivid impression of how the Edwardians imagined the past, and is interesting even if you're not all that into Anglo-Catholic pagentry. Unfortunately, you'll have to track down a paper copy if you want to look at them, as I don't have access to a scanner...
However, the most striking thing about it is that the article is illustrated with genuine colour photographs - direct colour, not colourised by painting later. From 1909. As such, it gives a very vivid impression of how the Edwardians imagined the past, and is interesting even if you're not all that into Anglo-Catholic pagentry. Unfortunately, you'll have to track down a paper copy if you want to look at them, as I don't have access to a scanner...