Jane Long loves vintage photographs. She loves them so much that she gives each of them a new, trippy backstory. “In my mind, they became characters in tales of my own invention,” Long explains.
Her retouched photos have more than just color: each of them is given a dream-like element that paints an entirely new portrait of who these people may very well have been.
“It takes anywhere between 10 and 40 hours [to completely retouch a photo] depending on how complex it is and how many elements are involved,” Long told Distractify in an email.
“I wanted there to be some ambiguity about the images, what is real and what is not real?” she said. “Are these light characters or dark? Restoring the images is only part of the process, the rest is the dance.”
She says it’s not very easy to pick the right images to restore.
“Sometimes it just jumps out at me, like the acrobats in ‘The Juggling Act,’” Long says. “I knew as soon as I saw her that I wanted her to be a woman on a tightrope juggling life.”
If you enjoy her work, be sure to check her out on Facebook.
