WW1 Colour Photos

French soldiers receiving a haircut, c.1916

Colour photography was first invented in around 1903, and by 1907 the Lumiere brothers had were able to produce reliable colour images that were almost every bit as good as their monochrome equivalents on the first ever colour film. Unbelievably, a small number of colour photos were subsequently shot on this new film. They are - to my knowledge - entirely French in origin.

There is a remarkable archive assembled at http://www.worldwaronecolorphotos.com/ where the author has painstakingly collected together colour images from the First World War. None of them are "action" photos (indeed, few WW1 photos are) but they are striking images of the conflict as I had never seen it before. One of the most poignant images I found in the archive is this:

Senegalese and other French African Colonial Soldiers

That these men should have been photographed at all is quite remarkable - I find it even more so to see such an image in colour.