Charleston Museum Presents “The Lowcountry in Living Color: Making Historical Photographs Come to Life”

Over 90% of the photographs housed in the Museum’s Archives are black and white, and while many viewers find them historically charming, others find it difficult to see particular details within the image. By colorizing a black and white photograph, certain components otherwise overlooked, become visible.

For years, photograph colorization was used mainly by high tech production companies. Recently however, computer programmers have created colorization operating systems that use Artificial Intelligence. Modeled after the human brain, the AI software can recognize objects in a photograph and determine their likely colors. Although, it can still be time consuming and rather tricky, colorizing a historical photograph is now more accessible to everyday users. The software used for this exhibit included Computer Vision from Mail.ru and Deep AI along with Photoshop 2020 to blend and adjust where needed. This exhibition offers the opportunity to view historic photographs through a new lens.

The Lowcountry Image Gallery is an exhibition gallery that showcases previously unseen photography and other works of art from the Museum Archives. Comprising over 40,000 photographs and representing a variety of themes, subjects and locations from around the Charleston area, this collection provides a glimpse into Lowcountry life from the dawn of the photography era to the present.