A smiling Cuban revolutionary leader, Che Guevara and the poignant last photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt, taken a day before he died just 11 weeks into his fourth term, are among a selection of fascinating colourised historic images.
Having an injection of hues helps bring to life the old black and white images of some of history’s most inspirational – and interesting – characters, such as a thoughtful-looking Pablo Picasso, at the maestro’s ceramic gallery.
Among the range treated and posted on Reddit is a 1944 picture of General Douglas MacArthur, wearing Ray-Ban aviators and smoking a corn cob pipe, in the Philippines.
He famously waded ashore onto the island of Leyte a few hours after his troops landed and made a radio broadcast declaring, ‘People of the Philippines, I have returned!’
Founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant chain, Colonel Harland Sanders, is featured too, in a colourised version of a 1972 picture taken by Yousuf Karsh.
This black and white portrait of Albert Einstein, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose theory of relativity revolutionised science, was taken when he was 68 years old, taken by Orren jack turner in 1947
This thoughtful-looking black and white photo of Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta was taken on August 18, 1962, by Yousuf Karsh, who explains on his website that King had just returned home from Albany, where for months he had been leading the most concentrated and sustained assault on segregation seen till then in the South. The master photographer said: ‘This portrait was taken under the most difficult conditions. We had very little time, and the only place available was a corner of Mr King’s church’
In this iconic photo, dubbed ‘The Roaring Lion’, Winston Churchill is shown in a no-nonsense portrait in the Canadian Parliament, taken by Yousuf Karsh in December 1941, during the early years of the Second World War. In his book ‘Faces of Our Time’, Karsh recalled taking the image after Churchill had spoken before the parliament. He was in a sour mood and ‘in no mood for portraiture and two minutes were all that he would allow me’
About two months prior to his assassination, this black and white portrait was taken of Abraham Lincoln, in February 1865. He was the first American president to use photography for political purposes, including this picture by Alexander Gardner, which was described as showing a ‘deep latent sadness’
This powerful 1944 picture of General Douglas MacArthur, wearing Ray-Ban aviators and smoking a corn cob pipe, was taken in the Philippines. He famously waded ashore onto the island of Leyte a few hours after his troops landed and made a radio broadcast declaring, ‘People of the Philippines, I have returned!’
Che Guevara, with his left arm in a sling, after breaking his arm, is pictured above in Havana, back in 1959. He was an Argentinean-born, Cuban revolutionary leader who became a left-wing hero
According to photographer Yousef Karsh, when he turned up at Pablo Picasso’s ceramic gallery in Vallauris to meet the maestro, the gallery owner told him: ‘He will never be here. He says the same thing to every photographer’. But to everyone’s amazement, he not only showed up, but was prompt and ‘wore a new shirt’
John F. Kennedy is captured here in the Oval Office, in the White House, in 1961, the year that his presidency began with his inauguration in Washington D.C.
Above: the late Stephen Hawking and his first wife, Jane Wilde, on their wedding day in 1965. They had three children: Robert was born in 1967, and their daughter Lucy in 1970, and nine years later their third child Timothy was born. Professor Hawking died on March 14 this year
A stern-looking Queen Victoria is pictured here in 1882 by Alexander Bassano
Founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant chain, Colonel Harland Sanders, is featured too, in a colourised version of a 1972 picture taken by Yousuf Karsh