Marina Amaral (born in 1994) is a Brazilian artist known for her colorizations of historical black and white photographs.

Work

A self-taught artist, she was an

international relations International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such as ...

student in college, but dropped out in April 2015 to pursue art full-time. Amaral's creative process involves adding color to black and white photographs using

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster ...

, following careful historical research to determine the colors of each object pictured. Amaral describes what she does as providing a "second perspective" as the pictures with color convey images that do not seem too far removed from the contemporaneous viewer. Her process of colorizing a photo can take as little as an hour or more than a month to complete. Each colorized photo may include hundreds of

layers Layer or layered may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Layers'' (Kungs album) * ''Layers'' (Les McCann album) * ''Layers'' (Royce da 5'9" album) *"Layers", the title track of Royce da 5'9"'s sixth studio album *Layer, a female Maveric ...

. In 2017, Amaral was the illustrator for historian Dan Jones' book, ''The Colour of Time: A New History of the World, 1850–1960''. In 2018 Amaral colorized twenty archival photos of

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

prisoners, under the project title ''Faces of Auschwitz''. The project was a collaboration with the

Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum ( pl, Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau) is a museum on the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim (German: ''Auschwitz''), Poland. The site includes the main concentration camp at Auschwi ...

Personal life

In 2020, Amaral was revealed to be on the

autism spectrum The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...

References

Living people 1994 births People from Belo Horizonte 21st-century Brazilian artists 21st-century Brazilian women artists Artists with autism {{Brazil-artist-stub