Celebrate black history month by exploring these portraits of African Americans in Lehi during the 1800’s. These portraits are a type of photograph known as tintypes. Tintypes were invented in 1853 by a Frenchman named Adolphe-Alexandre Martin and quickly grew in popularity in the 1860s and 1870s due to their low cost and much faster development times. Previous methods of photography took a long time to develop, but tintypes could be developed in 10-15 minutes. The speed of development did come at a cost in the quality of the print but there were plenty of instances where it was preferred, and it made photo portraits accessible to more people. Read more about tintypes here.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence algorithms have made it possible to bring portraits like these to life. This portrait was colorized by the app Colorize Images which is currently on android only. The enhancements and animation were done on the app Remini, but unfortunately, the animator feature is no longer available on this app. A great alternative is the MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia face animator, which is free to use when you sign up for a free account.