Lewis Reed’s Hand-tinted Photos
Before the advent of color photography, photographers painstakingly applied color to black and white photos in order to show a truer visual depiction of a photo image. The hand-tinted photos of Lewis Reed and his daughter, Mary Jane (Reed) Gartner are examples of this medium. The small collection of hand-tinted photographs were taken by Lewis Reed in the early 1900s. The photographs were hand-colored my my mother, Mary Jane (Reed) Gartner.
Below are hand-tinted photos before and after. Pastel was a good choice for coloration.
Original photograph by Lewis Reed.
Original photograph by Lewis Reed. The photograph was meticulously tinted by my mother, making it look like a color photo.
The art of hand tinted photos was introduced along side the daguerreotype in 1839. In the 19th century it was most common for the professional photographer to tint the photograph or tintype just after printing. Later photo artists introduced new techniques using oil, watercolor and other types of paint to achieve the desired result. With the Great Depression, the sale of professional hand tinted photographs declined, but the home artist continued to have access to hand tinting kits. There is a very informative wiki article here which provided me with the brief details I have shared with you.
These days, most people rely on Photoshop to digitally make such enhancements. Progress, you know …
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Reed Brothers Dodge History (1915-2012) by Jeanne Gartner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Reed Brothers Dodge History 1915 – 2012 
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