MOSCOW, 10 JULY— RT has concluded its social media colorization contest, held as part of its ambitious multimedia project #Romanovs100. The contest was judged by renowned Brazilian artist and professional colorist Marina Amaral, whose renditions of historical photos have been covered by the BBC, The Verge, the Daily Telegraph, and Daily Mirror, among other international outlets.
Participants were invited to color one or more of three archival photos of the Romanov family specially chosen by Marina Amaral. Once finished, participants were asked to publish their work on one of three social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter—with the hashtag Romanovs100.
First prize went to Gavin Daniel Wieszala for his colorization of a photo of Tsar Nicholas II with his son Alexei. Nikitamarvel_art took second place for his portrait of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, while third place went to ikonaut GmbH for his coloring of a photo of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
Regarding her criteria, Amaral said she looked for attention to detail, color choices, realism and respect for the original photographs when choosing the winners.
“Colorization of photos is an art through which we can express ourselves, but we must always keep in mind that they are also historical documents, and therefore we cannot modify and/or distort the items that are present (or not) in the images,” said Amaral. While judging the contest, Amaral also had the opportunity to finish the work of Tsar Nicholas II and Alexandra’s youngest daughter Anastasia, who had begun colorizing a few family photos 100 years ago.
The winners will receive two limited edition books: ‘#1917LIVE – The Russian Revolution in Tweets’ (the result of the RT project of the same name, dedicated to the Russian Revolution of 1917), and a book by Marina Amaral and British writer and historian Dan Jones called ‘The Colour of Time: A New History of the World, 1850-1960,’ which contains around 200 historical photographs colorized by Amaral.
In April 2018, the same team behind #1917LIVE launched #Romanovs100 to bring the story of Russia’s last royal family to life through thousands of Romanov family photographs, which were recently unearthed from within the national archives. The large-scale, cross-platform multimedia project takes place across four platforms – YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – in order to retell the last decades of imperial Russia over the 100 days leading up to the centenary of the family’s execution on July 17.
RT’s #1917LIVE project is one of the biggest-ever historical re-enactments on Twitter. Dozens of Twitter accounts were set up as key historical characters of the period, from the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II and revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin to common workers and soldiers, tweeting events from 100 years ago in real-time. Historians from the US and UK took part in the project, as well as the world-renowned Brazilian author Paulo Coelho. The project received 20 Russian and international awards, including the 2018 Webby People’s Voice Award. At the Shorty Social Good Awards, the project won the ‘Best in Education’ award and took gold for ‘Best Overall Twitter Presence.’
