I understand the feeling, I think. And as amok said, there is less real-ness when an artists' perception goes into it. Nonetheless, it helps my brain establish that these are real things from not long ago vs historical artifacts.

The WWII documentary is not colorized. It was filmed in color and very carefully digitized to get it into HD. It's worth a watch.

That's exactly why it works for me, though, it turns me around from thinking of these people as just a part of history far removed from my own to people I could have been actually talking to.

It's not like anyone's suggesting that we replace all the B&W photos with this stuff it's just a very effective way of bringing the reality of living in that time home to people. Instead of seeing Nazis standing in rank and thinking "Oh yeah, that happened once" I find myself feeling a little frightened because the reality of what this group of people accomplished is easier to relate to my contemporary experience of world events.

Maybe this is a question of personal experience. I am almost 40 now and when I grew up b/w pictures were still pretty common. Lots of my childhood pictures are in b/w and there is not one single picture of my parents and grandparents in color. And when my dad gave me his old reflex camera, I used to make and develop lots of pictures myself and many of them were in b/w. I often used b/w when I wanted to focus on the essential.

So I guess my brain is more used to process b/w pictures and, in a way, more able to connect them with reality. I guess you are a bit younger than I am and, with different experiences you have made, you might see things differently.

But maybe this is just the case for the pictures that were clourized afterwards. I have seen WW2 footage and pictures, for instance, that was originally shot in color and they don´t have the "less real" effect on me. Maybe it is just that I am so familiar with the original b/w shots, that seeing them in color feels wrong.

Now i know where Gandalf came from

The difference is negligible to me. I don't find any loss to seeing the originals in B&W. I mean, it's neat, kind of. But it doesn't make these events or people any more real than they were previously to me. In fact, I find the colored interpretation to somewhat detract from the authenticity of the original. Maybe because, as an artist, the artist's interpretation is obvious to me.

The difference is important to me. Black and white does creat a distance, not only temporal (contextual) but also esthetical : that's exactly why many art photographers nowadays resort to black and white. Instead of showing a bland testimony of some (pseudo-)neutral fact, black and white makes you step back, and experience the immage through an esthetised perspective, a contemplative mood. Casual colour makes things more "real" and more mundane. It skips the artsy (or "past artefact") filter.

Mark Twain is not a historical figure immortalized on a picture. He's a regular bloke in a garden, available for a handshake. And, as others have put it, just casually photographed by a mobile phone.

Great find, thanks for sharing! Some of these are very convincing.
You too, eh? The moment I scrolled down to that pic of Walt Whitman, I was like "Holy crap... Gandalf!".

That's the thing -- these edits make you look at these scenes in a completely different way. It's a work of art in its own right.

And as for the remark about casual mobile phone pics: Aside from the colour nothing major has been changed about these photographs. The compositions and content are still exactly the same, so they have no more or less artistic value as the originals. ( Aside from the whole aspect of historical accuracy. But then, one could argue that these are actually more accurate, since the sky back then was just as blue as it is now, and the grass green, not grey -- they just did not have the technology to capture it yet. )

Most of the Lincoln ones from this link and the OP look like paintings to me when they are colorized.
But that first one in your link - Lincoln at Antietam freaking blows me away.