1940's WW2 in Techni(?)Color

Whenever you look at historical clips, you see the clips in shaky, noise filled, scratchy black and white. Look! There is Hitler screaming in all his evil black and white glory. Ok, there is Mussolini's body hanging upside down in black & white, and this I am glad for. WW2 photographs broadcasted atrocities of war in its purest forms, and most of it was in black and white or greyscale format.

Cute kids eating carrot sticks. Photo from the BBC

Earlier this year and late last year, I stumbled onto a number of photographs around the time of WW2 in colour. I was sort of stunned actually, because when I thought of my great great grandparents, I always saw them in black & white. In fact, I saw everything as black and white, even the trees, bees and breeze. Even then I thought of the muted colour scheme: beige, hunter green, baby blue, black, brown and white. The only person who seemed to have any kind of colour at those times was the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II in 1952, even her dad, King George can be seen only in black & white.

HRH Queen Elizabeth II, 1952

This is where LIFE publications come in. LIFE has been documenting almost all of WW2's history as well as the Queens Coronation, and many of life back then. It would be cool if they had pics of Old Trinidad and Tobago in their coffers, we were also affected by WW2, and we still have some visual history to see. Even if all we have are car parks and dislocated, crumbling quarry stones. Where was I? Oh yes, so if it was not for certain things in this world, like the invention of photography, or, the painstaking work of adding colour to photos, so that we can watch movies like The Ten Commandments in Technicolor, we would have no idea, how exciting things were in the early days.

I still have a bit of fever in my bones, so my doctor gave me three additional days of rest, what he does not know is that sleeping is quite painful and I have not experienced that much rest, I may have to go back and get some antibiotics soon.

Here is link I wanted to show you, it has all the pics of colour in the 1940's, take a look, some things may surprise you: LIFE 1940.

2011©LisaMarieBonaparte

Priceless Photos

Are you ready for it? I have some pictures of old St. James main road and one colour photo of Frederic Street. In addition, a picture of the old Scarlet Ibis Hotel, I understand that where this building used to be, the Emerald Plaza building is now standing. So you saw them here first, enjoy!


Frederick Street. If only I could get a picture of East Dry River.


Old St James main Road


Lower Frederick Street, perhaps 1960's



Hotel Scarlet Ibis. Architecturally speaking, this design is geometrically stunning.


This looks like Belmont.

Pictures of old Trinidad & Tobago

I found a website some time ago, and it had some remarkable pictures of Trinidad and Tobago. I do not claim copyright on them, but they are so precious I decided to post them here, there are some more, as I keep finding them, now when I get the links I will post them at a later date.

It is just something to get away from the daily turmoil of life in this country. Enjoy!