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May 1942. "Southington, Connecticut. Where Southington folk buy their magazines." Photo by Fenno Jacobs for the OWI.
Under the original black-and-white photo, one commenter remarked, "The only thing better than this picture would be to see it in color." This prompted me to start on what eventually became an almost year-long journey of Internet detective work in order to find all the magazines in this shot as they looked in their original colors. Click here to see all the magazine covers I collected. View full size.
On the 4th row from the bottom, on the right side, that issue of Astounding includes the 2nd installment of what would later be called Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. The story in that issue was called "Bridle and Saddle", and it was featured on the cover.
This is a truly amazing effort by the coloring artist.
and the black and white image had the color filtered out.
As a colorization person myself, I am so very impressed! Serious dedication. Thanks so much for your effort! I love it!
Great piece of detective and illustrative work!
As someone who works in PhotoShop everyday, let me praise you for your technical skills, and for the never ending amount of research you did to make this turn out so very well. Kudos sir.
Whoa!! Makes you want to get into the picture and get every one of those magazines. I saw a copy of Life Magazine. Has General MacArthur on the cover.
Thank you for this incredible job.
"Little Oscar's First Raid," in the upper left-hand corner (second row, about five in from the left) — an air-raid adventure for tots! — and the fellow in the snappy pinstripe suit on the right.
This is one of the reasons I LOVE shorpy. Congratulations on this beautiful work!
Speaking of which, seeing that copy of 'Astounding' magazine reminds me that I still have the gravest doubts about the name change.
thesaurus.com does not have enough superlative words to describe your efforts. You are either a genius or a complete OCD madman.
The reflections on the shelves just blew me away.
That's all I can say...WOW! Avzam, that is a masterpiece. I'll be back to paintedblack to study more of your covers collection.
WOW!
Thus robbing me of an irresistible, if obvious, comment.
What's really astounding is your research, not the colorization. But bravo for both.
Remove the word 'Colorized' from the title and you'd swear you were looking at a Kodachrome photograph. Fantastic job!
Really, this is a remarkable achievement. I salute you, sir or madam.
Nothing short of SPECTACULAR! What an epic accomplishment. Congratulations on excelling beyond any human expectations. I am speechless.
...in every sense of the word.
Being a colorist in the Shorpy Colorization Studio myself, I have to say that you are a master of the work.
Your dedication to the art is outstanding and detailed.
I am working on colorizing a photo at the moment and have found all the items needed on the web to do be historically accurate.
Well done sir.
I agree with bobzyerunkl, we should call it the AVI award and it should be given every year by a vote of all the Shorpy members - [baxado]
My mind boggles at the work involved.
Dave needs to come up with some kind of Shorpy Oscar or Emmy, if I may be so bold to suggest. "The envelope please ... the winner for outstanding, painstaking detail work in colorization is ... " Imagine the amount of the research and patience to get those edges of magazines right. My mother used to wear seamed stockings like those, and they were the same exact color. Wonderful job Avzam.
This is just amazing! I can only speak concerning the funny books and pulp magazines, but Avzam has just nailed those! From the rope logo on the Don Winslow comic to the cover of Superman hoisting Hitler and Hirohito, the addition of color seems precisely correct. Fascinating.
My desktop image of Dallas' Elm Street will now be replaced by this one and join other Shorpy.com images like the China Clipper and the rustic general store in my Former Desktops folder.
Wow! Awesome job, and to think someone did that much work just for me! I really feel special.
No kidding, this is why I love this place.
I have to "Shorpy.com" at least once a day.
And I like nothing better than to pass the Shorpy link along to a friend. I feel like I am giving them a special gift, and so far everyone loves my gifts!
Yeah, I guess you did a decent job of it, but you got one of the jelly bean colors wrong.
I recently got into colorizing photos. When I burned through all the family photos that my parents could provide, I turned to shorpy. I have done a couple of drug store, grocery store and gas station pictures and one record store picture and i always try to research the products and get them correct when I can. However this is far, far beyond anything I have accomplished. I am amazed. I've looked at your other stuff and it all looks so natural. You are the colorizer I aspire to be. My drug store picture got featured on the front page. I'm hoping to get featured again one day. It was a thrill. This is beyond anything I could hope to do though. It's Amazing!
Wish I could reach in and start browsing. I was surprised to see carpet in this era, I thought most places in this time period had hard floors.
the latest issue of Catholic International"
Nothing short of amazing. Great job!
Great stuff, I did something like this with about as many titles for a publisher a while ago so I can feel your pain!
The colorization is amazing in itself. To have it happen based on true historical colors, my historical hat's off to you. True understanding of history in all it's glorious detail is more easily discerned by Shorpy and efforts like this one.
Incredible job. Thank you so much for sharing the finished product with all of us!
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