A Czech father consoles his son in a displaced persons camp in Germany in 1949; ten years later, in the midst of the Algerian war, a little Algerian girl who had taken refuge in Tunisia stared at the lens of a photojournalist. On the other side of the world, in 1978, boat people fled Vietnam and went to Malaysia. Black-and-white photographs of refugees fill history books that we often flip through without paying attention to the illustrations.

On the occasion of World Refugee Day, Monday June 20, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has decided to bring these forgotten images back to life by colorizing twelve photographs from its archive of 100,000 images, all by retracing 70 years of exodus around the world.

“We selected these photos in part for their composition and geographic scope, as well as the many decades they cover,” said Christopher Reardon, head of the office of global communications at UNHCR.

“But we also chose them because they show some things the world needs more of today, like access to security; food and shelter; and the ability to return home in safety and dignity or be resettled in a safe third country.

On 23 May, the number of internally displaced people in the world passed the 100 million mark for the first time, or just over 1% of the world’s population.

For this project entitled “The Color of Flight”, UNHCR collaborated with Brazilian artist Marina Amaral, 30, who specializes in coloring archive images. Author of “The Color of Time”, a book that brings together 200 restored and colorized photos of historical figures, places and events, she made a name for herself by colorizing photos of Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein and Elizabeth II. In 2018, his colorized photo of Czeslawa Kwoka, a 14-year-old child killed in Auschwitz, went viral on social media.

“Colors allow us to connect on an emotional level”

By coloring the photos, his objective is clear: to bring the reader closer to these photographs of yesteryear. “My main goal is to create a bridge between the past and the present,” said Amaral, whose mother is a historian.

A history buff since childhood, Amaral said she loves black and white photos. “As historical documents, they are very important. However, I think it’s hard to connect with them because we don’t live in black and white. We live in a colorful world.

“This difference creates an emotional barrier that prevents us from understanding that the people we see in these photos, even those taken over 100 years ago, were real. They were just like us, with their own dreams, ambitions, fears, struggles, etc. Colors break down that wall and allow us to connect on an emotional level and not just on a rational level.

For “The Color of Flight”, Amaral colorized twelve stories, set in twelve different times and places around the world. In particular, it restores color to the eyes of a little girl who fixes the lens of photojournalist Stanley Wright in 1959. The child fled to Tunisia to escape the Algerian war. Behind her, the damaged clothes of the four men, the old woman and the little boy who accompany her have also been restored in their beige and brown tones.

Amaral also turns the sky and sea blue in a 1978 photo by photographer Kaspar Gaugler of a group of ten boat people who fled Vietnam for Malaysia. As in the previous photo, the white and gray shades of the wet clothes turned into bright greens, blues and oranges.

A laborious task

Coloring each image requires hours of investigation and hard work. “I always start by researching as much as possible in the photographs. At this point, I find and gather visual references that will help me in the colorization process.

Original colors of a uniform, a vehicle, a building, and even, when possible, visual elements of the protagonists themselves… All the details of the photos are examined.

Thanks to her research, she was able to restore the exact colors of the plane transporting Asian refugees from Uganda to Austria on a photograph from 1972. Shortly before, Idi Amin Dada had announced to the Ugandan Asian community, settled in the country since the turn of the century, that she had 90 days to leave the country.

Many had British passports and were able to settle in the UK, but thousands more were left stateless. Austria was one of the many countries that welcomed them.

However, for the majority of the photographs featured in “The Color of Flight”, the search was unsuccessful.

“I had a caption accompanying each photo. However, they could offer little to no information on what colors I should use,” Amaral said.

“So I had to make artistic choices. The colorization itself is completely done by hand, and it can take me hours or even days to complete a single photo,” Amaral added.

Amaral uses Photoshop to color the photos. With a simple touch pad, Amaral applies its colors detail by detail. The process can take several hours or even days for a single photo.

“Their story does not end when we close our history books”

Asked about her favorite photo in the series, Amaral answered without hesitation: “Karate Kid”. The photo, taken in 1983 by photojournalist Alejandro Cherep, shows a group of children from Laos who had taken refuge in Argentina at the end of the Vietnam War. In the foreground, a little boy strikes a martial arts pose while behind him, his four friends laugh heartily.

“I spend many hours ‘in the company’ of the people in the photos I’m working on, and I can’t help but wonder what was going through their minds while they were being photographed,” Amaral said.

“The UNHCR was able to find the little guy [in this photo], who now lives in Argentina and is called Kykeo. I can’t say how amazing it is when one of the ‘characters’ I worked on in the photo jumps off the screen and materializes ‘in front of me,’” she said. .

Today, almost forty years later, Kykeo and the small group still live in Argentina. And the little boy became a karate instructor.

For Amaral, this “Karate Kid” symbolizes the whole purpose of his work. “Refugees are not historical figures frozen in a photograph, and history does not end when we close the history book,” she concluded.

This article has been translated from the original in French.