Resistance is Futile

Columbia Records commissioned Dynamichrome to digitally colour reconstruct an older colour piece from Franz von Stillfried-Ratenicz's famous Japanese portraits of the Meiji era. The Manic Street Preachers album RESISTANCE IS FUTILE is out now in standard and deluxe editions.

“I just can’t navigate myself through the digital hysteria and political insanity of the current times. I’d be lying if I said I felt that absolutism of my youth now, because everything overlaps. That’s the idea of the samurai warrior being an analogy for us – everyone else has their iPhones and we’ve still got our guitars.”

— Nicky Wire, the Manic Street Preachers on ‘Resistance is Futile’

1881
Yokohama, Japan,
横浜 日本

by Franz von Stillfried-Ratenicz
フランツ・フォン・シュティルフリード
(Alamy)

[Left] Original hand tinted photograph using shashin abura-e (写真油絵) techniques. The hand tinting providing a contemporaneous guide to likely colour reference of real samurai armour.

[Right] The image was stripped of the tinted colour and digitally cleaned before new colour is applied.

2018
London, England

by Dynamichrome

Using the hand tinted photograph and contemporary colour photographs of similar samurai armour, new colour is introduced back into the original photograph resulting in a historically authentic photograph.

1881 / 2018
Yokohama, Japan, 横浜 日本 / London, England

Digital Colour Reconstruction
& Parallax Animation
Jordan J. Lloyd & Ümit Kayabas

Thank you to
Charlie Shawcross, Barney Leigh, Columbia Records, Sony Music and the Manic Street Preachers

Produced by
Dynamichrome for Columbia Records

Source
© Alamy / Columbia Records