Adding a splash of colour to the history of Galway

Whether it’s a battered photo of two children of a particular era, or a stately figure that has shaped all of our lives, our perception of them has been informed by black and white stills shared, sometimes among families and other times in the pages of history books.

With the wonders of modern technology, a professor at NUI Galway has given some of these photos a new lease of life – unlocking a whole new understanding by adding colour to those photos and bringing to life the characters and locations they illustrate.

John Breslin, known for his innovation through setting up boards.ie, adverts.ie and co-founding the Galway City Innovation District, began to colourise old photos while on a quest to compile his family tree.

It was out of his dabbling with genealogy that Old Ireland in Colour was borne – colourising photographs of both historical figures and places, along with ordinary people who represent life in Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

For John, who does this work in his free time, colourising these photos is about more than giving us all something enjoyable to look at, but also educating people and making history accessible and competitive in a world that moves so fast.

“It brings the photographs to life. We are living in a very media-saturated culture. A lot of stuff is very ‘in your face’ and it’s hard for history to compete with that,” he explains.

By adding colour to these photos, and posting the results on Twitter and Instagram, it makes that history accessible. So, whether it’s a colourised photo a crowds packing into Dublin City Centre on Republic Day in April 1949, or a group of people waiting for Mass on Inis Meáin, the significance of both is not lost on a generation obsessed by the lure of modern photography.

“I am not a history buff, but I’ve learned a lot more since I started this process last year,” says John.

“There is a process of taking various historical characters and collating their story to add context to the photograph,” he continues.

Michael Collins, De Valera, Countess Markievicz and the seven signatories of the Proclamation are just some of those characters given to us in colour through this process, and the addition of their story has captured the attention of many social media users that might only have had fleeting knowledge of what these monumental figures in our history stood for.

By adding sounds and 3D effects to some of the photos such as audio of farm animals on stills of the Aran Islands, John can take a static black and white photo and invigorate it in a way that attracts a younger audience that might not have been interested before.

The process of colourising these photos uses DeOldify software, an Artificial Intelligence mechanism which John says bring you “a good bit of the way”.

“It does require some manual intervention,” he says. “Invariably, with AI, it generates everyone wearing purplish-coloured clothes, but you look into the historical records and change the clothes to different colours.”

While it’s never going to be 100 per cent accurate, by looking at those historical records and at paintings from the time, an appreciation for the type of clothing worn can be garnered. An example of this is achieving the right colours for the Galway shawl, worn by many women in photos of old Galway.

One of the benefits of posting these creations online is that it’s open to correction, and according to John, it’s a constantly evolving process whereby those in the know can contribute to getting these photos as accurate as they possibly can be.

“There was one scene from Dublin where I thought men in uniforms were Irish Volunteers, but it turned out they were British soldiers,” he says, obviously meaning a different colour uniform.

“You are always getting that feedback and you have to be willing to take it.”

Most of the photos used by John are taken from open access sources including the National Library of Ireland, the National Folklore Collection Dúchas, the Library of Congress and New York Public Library to mention a few.

In what has obviously become a labour of love for John, he has also started to purchase collections of old photographs with the aim of colourising and sharing them.

This process has unearthed interesting stories that pique the interest of Old Ireland in Colour’s online following, and is bring forgotten histories to a new audience.

“On Monday, I found a photo of Brother Walfrid who founded Celtic FC. I was actually looking for something else that happened in 1887 – the Bodyke evictions – and I came across this.

“I hadn’t realised it was an Irish man who founded Celtic FC; he was from Sligo and they’re now doing an article about him in the local newspaper,” says John.

One of the fascinating aspects of the work is achieving detail in the faces of those captured by a photographer’s lens, often over a century ago – and such is the detailed work that goes into this that in some cases, those who spot the pictures online find relatives they might not have been expecting to see as they scroll through their Twitter feed.

In one case last week, a man inadvertently unearthed freshly colourised photo of his grandmother holidaying on Inis Meáin, says John.

In the near future, he hopes to hold an exhibition of these photos in Galway, but in the meantime, Old Ireland in Colour continues to offer its growing online following a new look at the old, and a different perspective on a previously black and white country.