This new mini-exhibition in the Secret Staircase Gallery at the Museum of Photography will inspire you to colourise your photos.

Self-portrait. Photographer Aadu Treufeldt in his studio. 1904. Silver gelatin print in an album. Museum of Photography / Tallinn City Museum TLM F 8884. (The original photo was monochrome; the colouring was added digitally.)

Dreams of colour photography took many forms a hundred years ago. Photography enthusiasts were familiar with a variety of sophisticated techniques for making colour photographs, such as glass slides with colour grids and time-consuming three-colour photography and printing. However, for most photographers it remained a distant and very expensive prospect. The quickest and cheapest way was to visualise and apply colours by hand to a black-and-white photo. Colourising photographs was quite common until the mid-20th century.

In the early decades of the 20th century, Aadu Treufeldt (1874-1954), a photographer and traveller from Türi, revived his own photos by colouring them. The Museum of Photography houses his diverse photographic heritage and modest personal archive, including photo albums with nearly 50 coloured photographs. This adventurous and experimental photographer, who spent his years travelling all around the Far East, used three primary colours and a paintbrush to colour landscapes, vistas and portraits of friends and family. Each image conveys his delight in colour, lending black-and-white photos a whole new dimension.

The photos, originally the size of postcards, have been digitised for the exhibition and enlarged for easy viewing, retaining the original colouring of the photos as authentically as possible. The exhibition will be open until the end of the year.

The accompanying texts are in Estonian and English.

In addition to viewing the exhibition, you can try your hand at colouring photos yourself!

Read more about Aadu Treufeldt’s colourful life:

• Ülle Lillak. Colours of the Life of Photographer Aadu Treufeldt. – Sirp no. 47, 13 December 2002, p. 16
• Peeter Tooming. Aadu Treufeldt, Estonian Photographer. – History of Photography. An international quarterly. Vol 2, No, 1 1978, pp. 23-28

See also: COLOUR TICKLE, a vibrant exhibition of colour photography and vision, on the three floors of the Museum of Photography.

Compiler: Merilis Roosalu

Digitalisation and printing: Sander-Ott Eelmaa

Graphic design: Rein Seppius

Museum of Photography / Tallinn City Museum

Photo: Self-portrait. Photographer Aadu Treufeldt in his studio. 1904. Silver gelatin print in an album. Museum of Photography / Tallinn City Museum TLM F 8884. (The original photo was monochrome; the colouring was added digitally.)

Abikaasad Liine ja Aadu Treufeldt. 1915, Türi. Koloreeritud hõbeželatiinfoto. TLM F 8883 (albumis)

Türi rahvas väljasõidul Keila-Joal. 1939. Koloreeritud hõbeželatiinfoto. TLM F 8883:61 (albumis)

Kolm tüdrukut ülastest pärgadega, paremal fotograafi tütar Senta Treufeldt. Käru alevik. 1920. aastate algus. Koloreeritud hõbeželatiinfoto. TLM F 8882:12 (albumis)