between the mountains

I've fallen a bit in love with a blog. It is called Shorpy - the 100 year old photo blog, though that title shouldn't be taken literary as they've recently posted a lot of kodachrome images from the Second World War. And such stunning images as well. The colours are nearly vibrant and translucent, and I find them particularly interesting when compared to the almost monochrome vision of World War II as seen in Letters from Iwo Jima or Saving Private Ryan.
( click for rather large images )

It is pictures like these that makes you wonder why we continue to depict the Second World War as a bleak and shadowy place. Do we desaturate the colours of the films to fit the mood of the story? Or are we influenced by the grainy, black and white look of old documentaries? In other words are we so used to looking at blurry black and white films that this has become the staple for how the war should be depicted? So that a movie with vibrant colours would seem "off",even if it in reality would not be?

But do you know the really scary part? One of the films that most accurately depicts World War II as far as colours go is Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor. Troubling isn't it?

ETA: This is not a colour photo, but the composition is just too wonderful and surreal.