Old photos of Ireland have been newly colorized with the help of artificial intelligence, shedding new light on what life was like in the country during the 1800s and 1900s.
The photos are part of a project called ‘Old Ireland in Colour,’ which has social media accounts and a book scheduled to be released in North America in the coming week.
The photos span over a century of life in Ireland, from the 1840s up into the 1960s.
Éamon de Valera addressing Sinn Féin supporters from Ennis Courthouse during the East Clare by-election in July 1917
Irish suffragette and nationalist Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington (right) arriving to a court martial in 1916
A group of workers knitting wool in Ireland in one of the many colorized photos of the country’s working class people
‘We’re being bombarded with so much information, knowledge, bite-sized media and content, so, for the younger generation particularly, it can be hard for history to compete,’ National University of Ireland, Galway professor John Breslin told CNN of the colorized photos.
‘It’s important to be able to relate more to our history, and colorization definitely makes things more relatable.’
The black-and-white photos were colorized using an AI tool called DeOldify, an open-source model that can utilize deep learning to spark color in photos that were once grayscale.
Mary Barlow works at the spinning wheel, which was commonly used for spinning flax before it was woven into linen
Pictured are several women wearing the Galway shawl, heavy-weight shawl popular at the end of the 19th century
Four visiting girls in traditional dress on Inis Meáin. Some of those pictured are originally from Dublin
The software tool is trained in how to colorize various images by learning from color photos and black-and-white photos of the same image.
It can then be used to colorize other black-and-white photos, using the knowledge of what objects and people should look like in color based on the previous photos the tool has seen.
But because the software was developed in the United States – and therefore likely used mostly American pictures – more nuance was needed to apply it to the old Ireland photos.
This photograph depicts Mrs Bridget Flynn and five of her children – Francis (boy standing), Bridget (mother), Margaret (toddler), Philomena (girl standing), Norbert and Mary (seated) in September 1933
A large group of children, both boys and girls, mostly facing the camera in 1984
This photo was taken in the Temple Bar area of Dublin around 1969, with the boy carrying a wrapped-up toy gun
Breslin’s fellow professor, Sarah-Anne Buckley, helped in this regard, researching social history along with Breslin, then manually adjusting shades and colors as they saw fit.
The end result was eye-popping color added to photos of history, as well as photos of the day-to-day lives of the Irish people.
These photos include the working class herding pigs, spinning wool, or riding around on the back of horse-drawn carts.
A unit of anti-treaty IRA men are seen patrolling Grafton Street in Dublin in 1922, as Ireland is on the brink of civil war
This photograph was taken after the Arranmore Boating Tragedy in which nineteen people lost their lives
The Riley family, from Bradford, England, were survivors of the Lusitania sinking (pictured in 1915)
The photos also show the depths of poverty in Ireland at the time, such as tenement buildings in Dublin and barefoot villagers.
‘There were many different social classes in Ireland, as in many countries, so I think it’s important to show the full range,’ Breslin sold of the photos, which also include shots of the more wealthy class in Ireland.
‘We have a mixture of the wealthier classes and the gentry, and then you’ve got people who are just trying to survive and gather water and turf [peat] to burn on their fires.’
A group of men listening to a gramophone in Inis Bigil. This photograph appears to be from between 1900 and 1930
This photograph was taken on the day of the final. Dublin beat Kilkenny that day, on a scoreline of 4-4 to 1-5
This image depicts Mr J.P. Longfield, ‘Master of Fox Hounds’, on his horse, surrounded by dogs, about to go on a hunt
Pictured: Violet Gibson, who shot Mussolini in the nose as he walked among the crowd in the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome
Breslin also pushed back against criticism of the colorizing of the photos, saying they’re ‘not vandalizing the negatives.’
‘You can always go back and find the original photograph, and throughout the book we provide pointers to the original collection,’ Breslin added.
Breslin and Buckley’s book, which was the winner of Best Irish-Published Book of the Year at the Post Irish Book Awards in 2020, was published in Ireland in October 2020.
The book is set to be published in the United States on April 5.
Pictured is Patrick Byrne, who is often considered to be one of the last great harp players in Ireland