Colorization and cropping can alter the interpretive framework of an image, as it does in this Matthew Brady photograph attributed to Matthew Brady of Confederate Brigadier General Joseph Reid Anderson taken in Richmond, Virginia, in 1865.

Joseph Anderson, a Virginian, graduated from West Point in 1836 and served briefly in the U.S. Army. His lifework was developing and maintaining the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond from his acquisition of the company in 1848 through his death in 1892. Until the Panic of 1873, Tredegar was the South's largest industrial complex, and it did business until 1952.

During the Civil War, Anderson kept the Tredegar operational despite wartime shortages and bureaucratic inefficiencies. Tredegar served as the principal source of ordnance and munitions for the Confederate army and the manufacturer of iron plates and equipment for the Confederate Navy. In 1865, he saved the ironworks from fires set in Richmond to prevent Confederate facilities from falling into Union hands.

The original photograph shows Anderson in a Napoleonic pose, his hand buried in the front of the jacket. Despite the pose, his attitude and expression, his slightly unkempt uniform, and even the camera position that cuts off his left elbow seem to indicate both a man and a photographer with other priorities. (The origin of Civil War photographs attributed to Matthew Brady is often suspect. He did, however, assemble a team of photographers in 1865 to photograph the burned district of Richmond. Anderson's ledgers in the archives of the Library of Virginia show that he purchased photographs for eight dollars from Matthew Brady in January 1866.)

The cropped, colorized version of this photograph leaves less room for interpretation. It's a head shot of a Confederate general with a thoughtful expression, in many respects, perhaps more the photograph of Joseph Anderson, the industrialist, as history depicts him; in full, it is more the photograph of a man in, but not of, his circumstance.

Looking for information about how to colorize this photograph clarified one historic fact: that uniforms of Confederate officers were not uniform in color, ranging from blue to gray, depending partly on age, care, and fabric. In terms of technique, I learned the difficulties of skin tone, but not how to solve them, and chose to stop colorizing where I did since the next step would have qualified me for a mortician's license. I used a pinkish hue at about eight percent opacity on his face, copying a post-Civil war tintype of a great uncle. The tintype is black and white except for pink cheek highlights, and it seemed that this tone might be more in keeping with the era of this photograph.

This very helpful website includes a skin tone palette which offers a variety of options for color and shadows—particularly when paired with varying opacity levels in Photoshop.