Great Old Photos | Documentary Photographs | 20th Century Photo Archive

What is Colaimages.com

Colaimages.com is a stock photography archive specializing in digital images of original vintage photographs dating from 1900 to the 1980s. It stems from the idea of Marco Colazingari, an enthusiast collector of vntage photographs, whose goal is to provide digitalized images to the public.

The authors of the photographic collection are both professional photographers of the golden age of photojournalism and amateur photographers. Most of them are unknown, but nevertheless effective in representing the real spirit of their time. The old images portray the way we were, documenting the history of the 20th Century through its characteristic fashions, trends, icons, lifestyles, and social, economic and political events. The focus is on the Western civilization: Italy, United States, Denmark, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom are, in decreasing order, the dominant countries of origin of the vintage photographs included in the photographic archive. However, other countries and cultures are largely portrayed as a result of leisure traveling and colonialism.

What it offers

The goal is to offer a comprehensive quality choice of images from the past, and to help you in making your choice. Whether you need an image to illustrate your editorial project or need it for an alternative creative purpose, vintage photos make the difference. They possess an elusive charm that captures the attention of the reader. Old black and white photographs immediately catch attention differenty than present conventional digital photography. Do these old images attract our senses because of some nostalgic disposition? Or is it rather that they just appeal to our curiosity? Whatever the reason, a real vintage photograph gives your project a distinguishing touch of class.

The digital images come from original photographic prints. Every old, familiar snapshot available on Colaimages.com's bank of vintage images has been selected among numerous old, familiar snapshots. The vintage photographs are first scanned at 1200ppi optical resolution, and then reviewed in a post-production process aimed at restoring and maximizing the quality of the digital files, which are available in different sizes and resolutions. The aim is to keep the digital images exactly the same as their analogic counterpart; however, sometimes the original old photograph is in a poor condition, so the image needs to be restored. In this case, the attempt is to change as little as possible.

Search tips

The images can be searched in two ways: by accessing the link to the gallery or category, or by keywords. The archive is divided into a list of categories and a list of galleries. The same image is part of a category, is one of the galleries. The difference between the list of categories and list of galleries is only being classified with different typological criteria.

In the search result page, thumbnails of the images are shown. The RF-licensed images are marked green, while the RM-licensed images are marked red. To visualize details and the price of each photo, click on its thumbnail. You can also choose between two versions of the same image: an original version or a calibrated one, in which the levels have been adjusted. You can see both versions in the details page of each photo. You can also ask for the image free searching service, which includes vintage images not yet online. If you need help, Colaimages.com customer service will be pleased to satisfy your needs.