Tinting

Before the color era, hand-coloring or tinting was often added to photographs of all kinds; it’s a little hard to keep in mind now that tinting was intended not as some sort of effect, but as a way to make photos more realistic. Any dated color process will stand out for us, but the case of tinting goes a bit further. Especially now that its realism has receded, tinting tends to read as an extra layer of surface working and thus adds that much more complexity to our response. Techniques that effectively “slow down” the perception of photographs are rare in any register of the medium. In snapshots, tinting can be skillful, or it can be a rough-and-ready affair. It often seems so characterful that it brings the world of the snapshooters close to us in a way that a photograph alone would have trouble doing. And it can produce a wonderful incongruity: if we are interested in things only snapshots can give us, as I am, here is one. The person who tinted a photo is not necessarily the person who took it, and even if they are the same person, there are obviously different skills involved in taking a presentable picture and executing a presentable tint job. Perhaps more importantly, “skills” can do only so much with snapshot photography, whereas tinting can be more of an artist’s medium. Often it’s just as if some sophisticated studio overdubbing were somehow superimposed on a low-fidelity sound recording; the ensemble is a hard layer of clear intention overlain on a soft layer of unclear intention. It becomes very difficult to know what to call the result, especially if we are worried about the sense in which it might be art. The first example is just such a case: a skilled tint job on top of an ordinary snapshot. You might think that such a capable tinter wouldn’t have been interested in a picture that wasn’t even completely in focus. Is the object as a whole, the combination of photo plus tinting, the intentional art of the person or persons who created it? Probably not. Conversely, tinting can seem to be much cruder than the photo. In the second example the color on the face is like a make-up job applied by a child. But of course the seeming (relative) competence of the underlying photo can be completely factitious. Again I see no reason to believe this is anyone’s intentional art, as opposed to a somewhat ill-advised attempt to “finish” the photo, an attempt that happens to make an interesting impression now. In the last example, photo and tinting meld: they seem to be a rough match in general care and skill. What exactly was intended here? I found the picture pasted into an album of otherwise very ordinary family snapshots. There was one other largish tinted shot, but it was ordinary too. I saw no external evidence of an artist or artists at work. As for the evidence of the photo itself: the oddest thing about it is the selective and unrealistic application of color. Not all areas are tinted, and color values are washed out, with the relative exception of the swimsuited bottom at center. The tinter tinted what seemed important to him or her, and the more important, the stronger the color. That correlation strikes me as probably unconscious.

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