Adding colour by hand it was felt brought photos ‘to life’ though often as not the overall effect was often far from naturalistic or realistic and gave many pictures a somewhat other worldly quality. An analogy can be dawn with the clever handiwork performed in many an American funeral parlour whereby a sallow corpse is turned into a presenatable body an idealised frozen represntation to be viewed by the grieving relatives. In the case of the hand coloured photograph the tiny death (La petite mort) of the back and white image is replaced by a lifeless yet preserved colour image; set apart from the moment fixed (moment fixe).
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