US News

Classic Lincoln gets a paint job

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History doesn’t have to be black and white.

For this week’s cover story on Abraham Lincoln, Time magazine asked Swedish photographer and artist Sanna Dullaway, 22, to colorize famous images of our 16th president.

This was Lincoln’s last formal portrait, taken on Feb. 5, 1865, just 10 weeks before he was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC. The original, taken by Civil War photographer Alex Gardner and held by the Library of Congress, is black and white and pockmarked by time. The makeover is eerily modern.

“Whenever I colorize a photograph, I always experience the same feeling as I watch the subject in the photograph, in this case Lincoln, come alive,” Dullaway told The Post. “It ceases to be someone or something of the past and turns into a person that I might as well run into on the street today.

“What I want with my work is to create a window which allows you to peek into the past as our eyes would see it today. It’s not about replacing the photograph; it’s about presenting the moment and the historical context in a new perspective, to give you a better understanding of how it was back then.”

Dullaway said it took a little over an hour to Photoshop.

“I feel by colorizing I’ve combined painting and photography; the black and white tones are already there. All that’s missing is color.”