Bloody US Civil War battlefield scenes brought to life in colourised pics 150 years on
HARROWING photographs - which have been revamped with colour - depict the gruesome battlefield scenes of the Civil War.
The vintage images, some of which were taken in Petersburg, Virginia, capture the lifeless bodies of fallen confederate soldiers strewn across the ground in the aftermath of the war.
The vintage photographs were carefully colourised by Mads Madsen, 23, from Horsens, Denmark, who spent between 12 to 14 hours to colourise the pictures of the dead men at Dunker Church and Antietam alone.
Madsen said: "You're seeing Confederate soldiers; both good and bad, deceased or alive, out on the battlefield or in a studio getting their pictures taken.
"You’re seeing the ‘enemy’, so to speak, as you would be seeing the Germans of the Second World War.
"Only a handful of Confederate images survived the war, compared to the amount of Union images, so you’re getting a rare insight into a time long forgotten.
“I’m pretty good at distancing myself from the subject matter and working in bits and pieces, bit-by-bit – so rather than looking at the image as a whole, I look at it in bite-sized pieces; which definitely makes everything a whole lot easier.”
Other authentically colourised pictures depict two dead men lying on the ground in Maryland; a confederate buried and a federal unburied.
The American Civil War began from 1861 to 1865, a consequence of the enduring slavery that was bestowed upon predominantly Africans and African-Americans that resided in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries.
The confederates attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina, closely following the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln, whose group supported the banning of slavery in all the US territories.
Mads added: "They’re a piece of history, a cultural treasure – it’s an insight into a certain set of people who might not agree with the same things we agree with today and who might have made a lot of mistakes, but at the end of the day, they’re just as human as you and I."
Striking images like these are featured in British author Michael D. Carroll’s new book on the colourisation of historical images.
Out of the photographs, Mads’ favourite from the collection is either the Lewis Payne portrait or the Samuel Arnold portrait.
Rare war photographs brought to life with colourMOST READ NEWS
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