The year 1912 belonged to a world that existed just before modern life began to take shape. Horse-drawn carriages still shared the streets with early cars, and cities were growing rapidly. Looking back over a century later, the era can sometimes feel distant and weird when viewed through black-and-white photos.
That is what makes colorized images so fascinating. The photos collected here bring faces, streets, clothing, and everyday scenes from 1912 into sharper focus, making the people in them feel less like historical figures and more like ordinary individuals living their lives in a very different time. Seeing the year in color has a way of shrinking the distance between then and now in a way that black and white images rarely can. Let’s take a look at 20 colorized images from 1912.
1. An explorer facing extreme cold while exploring Antarctica, 1912
2. Titanic survivors Marjorie and Charlotte Collyer immediately following the sinking of the ship, 1912
3. Tsar Nicholas II stopping for a photo with his eldest daughter, Olga, while walking through the Nikitsky Botanical Gardens, 1912
4. Children working as oyster shuckers in South Carolina, 1912
5. A woman asking for an autograph from a Titanic disaster survivor, 1912
6. The RMS Titanic before its departure, April 9th, 1912
7. Exploring an ice cavern in Antarctica, 1912
8. The Titanic’s crew in 1912
9. Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Wilhelm II in Springe, 1912
10. Three young men in Estonia, 1912
11. Marie Curie, the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize, in her lab in Paris, 1912
12. At a charging station in 1912
13. A government printing office in 1912
14. Two young girls from Edmonton watching a train go by, 1912
15. A French soldier with signal flags during Maneuvers, 1912
16. A women’s pharmacy in Russia, 1912
17. The British women’s 4×100 Olympic relay team, 1912
18. Taking a photo on a donkey in Atlantic City, 1912
19. The liberation of Epirus during the First Balkan War, 1912
20. Edward Beale McLean and his wife, Evelyn, 1912
Want to see more vintage content from the early 1900s?
Check out 25 Colorized Photos of the Beginning of the 20th Century (1900-1905), or take a look at 20 Colorized Photos of the Early To Mid-1910s. Finally, if you want to see colorized photos of soldiers from the 1910s, check out 20 Colorized Photos of Soldiers in the 1910s.