In August 1921 the second sitting of Dail Eireann took place in Mansion House in Dublin. The occasion was captured in black-and-white by a photographer, archived within the Keogh Collection and has now been converted into colour for two photography books: Old Ireland in Colour 2, by John Breslin and Sarah-Anne Buckley, and The Colour of Ireland, County by County 1860-1960, by Rob Cross.
At first glance the colourised images are identical in both books: a green cloth over the speaker’s table, white statues in the background, mahogany benches. Take a closer look and you’ll notice discrepancies. Some of the sofas and armchairs at the front of the gathering in Old Ireland in Colour 2 are brown; in Cross’s book the same seats are red. In one image a woman’s hat is cream, in the other it’s white. The roof is lit with an orange glow in one picture; in the other it’s dark brown.
This game of “spot the difference” either illustrates the notion that history is subjective or points up the folly of altering historical record. The current trend towards colourising photographs from the past has certainly divided opinion. Historians such as Diarmaid Ferriter suggest that colourisation “undermines the essence” of the originals, while proponents contend it creates a greater engagement with history.
Some contemporary photographers do not feel engaged in the debate. “Photography is a process that is ultimately about image manipulation, and hand-colouring images is as old as photochemistry itself,” says Ross McDonnell, whose photobook Joyrider, a collection of black-and-white photos shot in Ballymun, was recently published.
Others are in vehement opposition. “It’s a form of vandalism, due to innovations in cheap digital printing,” says John Minihan, an Irish photographer known for his iconic black-and-white images of Samuel Beckett and Francis Bacon. “I am, and have been for 60 years, a black-and-white photographer. I buy film and put it in my camera — an organic process. There’s no embellishment. Edward S Curtis spent most of his life photographing the North American Indians. All his wonderful images are in the Smithsonian museum in America. Can you imagine turning his grey skies blue? That’s not how Edward S Curtis saw Sitting Bull or Geronimo. I try and live and work in the realm of truth. I think it’s disgraceful.”
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There’s no denying the popularity of the trend, though. Old Ireland in Colour, published last year, sold almost 60,000 copies. Its sequel, published in September, has sold 11,700 copies so far. The Colour of Ireland has shifted 3,000 copies since its October launch. These tomes cover a swathe of Irish history, from the Great Famine (1845-52) to the outbreak of the Troubles.
“One piece that was missing [from the debate over colourised photobooks] was any analysis of the absolute love for these books,” notes Buckley, who is a professor at NUI Galway, where Breslin is a lecturer. “We’re not going to have this level of popularity if people have that much of an issue with it. For us the process of colourising photographs leads people to history, helps them feel an empathy or a connection. We know that because we’ve been told it over and over again.”
Cross, an architect, sources most of his images in the National Library’s digital archive, which is where copyright royalties go.
For their first collection Buckley and Breslin discovered the eye colour of Violet Gibson, an Anglo-Irish woman who tried to assassinate Mussolini in 1926, from a police report. They use reference books about historical clothing. Paintings are another reliable source.
Occasionally the authors talk to descendants of the characters in the pictures or to the characters themselves. The first Old Ireland in Colour, for example, depicts a boy, in Merchant’s Arch, Temple Bar, in 1969. The boy, now grown up, contacted the authors after they posted the image online and told them the colour of his clothing, hair and eyes.
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Cross approaches his colourisation process with forensic detail. “I restore the photographs, getting rid of the cracks or hairs, dirt, signs of burning or age damage. Then I do the AI. I bring that image into Photoshop, set up layers for skin, clothes, dye, wood, vegetation, water. I research the clothes and uniforms, and add colour by hand. Faces, hands, flesh tones. It gradually gets better and better during the process.”
Editorial decisions are often required, particularly for very old images, and its these that annoy some historians. Cross presented both sides of the debate in The Colour of Ireland in the form of essays by the historians Diarmaid Ferriter and Donal Fallon. Buckley and Breslin address the argument in their new volume. Ethics aside, there are also debates over the aesthetics of colourisation.
A Man of Endurance (1915), a portrait of Tom Crean in Antarctica, and a photograph of Beckett from 1964, both in Old Ireland in Colour 2, appear diluted and less impactful in colour. “People have tried to change and colour my Beckett photographs,” Minihan complains. “Samuel Beckett was a black-and-white artist. You saw his work in black-and-white. When he said, ‘Two tramps on a country road by a tree,’ that’s what he meant. You have to follow that. He’d be appalled by this idea.”
This is not a new debate, Breslin points out: “Colourisation has been going on since the 1840s.” William Lawrence (1840-1932), who ran a photography studio in Dublin, added colours to his glass plates to make postcards, Cross says. There is even evidence that early photographers doctored their own images. When Breslin inspected an image from 1898 of Beatrix Frances Beauclerk, the Marchioness of Waterford, he discovered the photographer had shrunk her waistline.
Colourising film can be an art form in its own right, McDonnell believes. “I personally fell in love with hand-coloured photography while working in Kashmir and Afghanistan. It’s worth checking out Thomas Dworzak’s Taliban book by Trolley, which has some incredible portraits.”
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The authors of these colourised tomes point out that the original images are not going anywhere. “It’s not like we are taking negatives and smashing them, or writing in crayon or permanent marker on top,” Breslin says. “What’s interesting about the Old Ireland in Colour project is the awareness it has brought to photographs as well as history. I had a phone call from someone who rescued boxes of glass plate negatives, taken in the 1920s in Munster, from a skip. We’ve heard many stories from people who are rediscovering old pictures.”
Cross attributes the debate over the ethics of colourised photographs to a discomfort with change. “History happened in colour,” he says. “I’m just trying to turn that light switch on and engage people in history; then use my platform for good.”
Just don’t expect Minihan’s images to appear in one of these books any time soon. “As long as God spares me it will be black-and-white not digitally applied cremation,” he says. “I’m the guy out there with a [grave] stone over his head that says ‘satisfied’. That’s how I want it. In the ground: satisfied. I don’t want smoke from the chimney. I want a little bit more permanence. The truth is a permanent fixture. It shouldn’t be embellished just to suit people’s imprimatur and to add a bit of themselves on to history.”
Old Ireland in Colour 2 is published by Merrion Press at €24.95. The Colour of Ireland, County by County 1860-1960 is published by Black and White Publishing at €26.99
