The Greying of the Recent Past

It's something I run across more often as time goes by. I see a picture from the 1970's or 1980's in a paper, on the TV or over the internet, and it's black-and-white. In many instances, I clearly remember having seen the original in colour. What gives?

The only explanation I can think of ties in with an earlier blog post on Linked In, wherein I speculated that, in contrast with the changes seen in our grandparents' and great-grandparents times, succeeding generations are seeing less change. Take my father, born in 1939. By the time he was a half-century old, the world had gone from prop planes and Irving Berlin, to 757s and Bon Jovi.

I followed twenty-five years behind. The world had, or almost had, 747s already then, and the Beatles were up, with Jimi Hendricks waiting in the wings. I'm noticing some recent changes with urban architecture, which is welcome. Apart from that, and the looks of cars and people, not much has changed. We all, of course, walk around glued to our smartphones; I discount that, as even in the 1970's we had (be they rare) carphones and wireless phones.

So, what's behind the trend? I figure it's because photos from recent decades otherwise look too recent. I don't know about you, but one of the ways in which I try to 'date' a photo is by looking, first, at its colour status (is it faded? Hand-tinted? B&W?), then at any people in the photo (extremely helpful, especially with women), and finally for any technological or architectural clues. Absent the latter, the former is introduced by turning the photo to monochrome--instantly aging it.

There are, I think, two problems with this approach. First, and foremost, by eliminating the colour information from a photo, information is essentially chucked away. Electronic search engines tend to favour most-recent references over older ones, and so the B&W versions show up in a proportionately greater number of search results. That skews the view of recent decades, the other problem. The Seventies were a colourful decade, but less so when viewed through the 'greying' eye of history.

See it from my point-of-view: in, say, 30 years' time (when we'll likely still be glued to our smartphones or their successors), you'll most likely see photos from the 20-teens--in black-and-white. Imagine your camera phone snapping black-and-whites. Ridiculous, right? But how is someone of later decades to know that, when all the old images he sees from recent history are... black-and-white. You might feel a bit proprietary about the good-ol' 20-teens, start to feel they're being presented as not nearly as technologically-sophisticated as they were? And you'd be absolutely right. As am I.

Give that some thought.

-Bill