Shedding light and colour on our farming past

In his introduction, Michael B Barry says that The Irish Farm in Colour is an ‘attempt to capture the essence of Irish farming – its rhythm, its resilience and its deep connection to the land’. Through the careful selection of photographs, captions, and writings that comprise this impressive tome, you could say that it has been a successful endeavour. It is divided into significant periods in Irish farming history, and titled accordingly – we have ‘harvests and hardships’, ‘the dawn of a new century’, ‘from horse to tractor’, and ‘emerging modern times’. It reminds us of who we are as a nation – warts and all, perhaps – and what, as he puts it, kept ‘body and soul together’. John O’Byrne’s role as a colouriser of hundreds of images is integral to casting greater light, context, and meaning to our farming roots – because nothing is ever just black and white.

Instant interest

The Irish Farm in Colour is the fourth ‘history’ book that John and Michael have collaborated on but the first one that focuses on farming and rural life. John’s interest piqued immediately when the idea was mooted, he says. “I was hooked straight away. For generations, Ireland was, and still is, really, viewed around the world as the emerald isle, the island of saints and scholars, with that romanticised view of the countryside and the Irish farm, and the way of life that developed from the farm.
“But, in the name of progress and development, the reality is that rural Ireland is changing, and that has led to an erosion of the character and charm that made it unique in the first place. I hoped that by bringing these images to light again, albeit in colour, it would remind us all of the charm and character that Ireland is known for, and where that stems from.”
In this sense, he maintains that the colourisation of images plays an important role as it helps to make the past more accessible to people: “I believe that colourising images is important, today, more so than ever before,” he says. “It helps connect a younger generation to their past, and to show that life and events 100 years ago, for example, are actually closer to them than they imagine.”

Accuracy

But there is another important purpose to colourisation that is excellently illustrated on pages 32 and 33 of the book (see the image below). Turning to these pages presents you with an incredible photograph of an eviction scene at the home of John Flanagan in Tullycrine, Co. Clare in 1888. John comments: “Possibly one of my ‘favourite’ images to have done to show the importance that colour can play in broadening the understanding of what is depicted in photographs – but only when done correctly and well researched.” He continues: “This particular image had already been coloured and published in the past and at first, we were not sure if we should add it to the book, but I’m delighted we did.” He explains why: "In the other version of the image, it seems to be all British troops surrounding the home, all wearing scarlet tunics. It over emphasised and falsely represented the scale of military action taken that day. In fact, instead of a force of nearly 40 armed military personnel, there were fewer than 20 because a good portion of the uniformed personnel there were actually members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), in their bottle green uniforms.
“Now, you might wonder does highlighting this make much of a difference given that both the RIC and the military were working for the British Empire? What I would say to that is, if we are going to show history and educate people about our past, then we have to do so correctly and take every precaution not to misrepresent what was captured in any image. We must endeavour to ensure that our work is not only realistic, but truthful.”
Ensuring accuracy and a true representation through colouring an image can be painstaking but is necessary, John explains: “I would be quietly confident that, through the work I do, and the processes I have in place, while working on images, that misinterpretation would very rarely if ever happen. Hours upon hours of researching goes into a particuar topic, from uniforms to fashion advertising signage to vehicle colours – everything has been fully researched.”

The path to photography

Born, raised and still living in Rathangan, Co. Kildare, John’s path to photography and by association, colourisation, was pretty much accidental. “I had never expected to follow photography as a career, I fell into it as a means to an end to get out of school when I was in sixth year,” he says. A sporting injury at that time meant he was unable to play for the school’s GAA team. But missing the matches was not on his agenda. Cue his father’s camera and a sudden interest in taking photos. John continues: “One day I decided to bring the camera with me to school and go to a game under the pretense of taking photos for school. This went on for a few months with not a single photo being taken until one day at a match, I started snapping away and, having seen one of my images of an O’Neill’s football in mid air, I was hooked. From there, the camera was never too far away from me. That led to a last-minute application on the CAO form to do photography at Dublin Institute of Technology [now Technological University Dublin). A portfolio was hurriedly put together and I was accepted first time round.”
Although surprised at how theory-based the course was, he quickly discovered a love for archiving and restoring old images. “This began with a college project that connected me with veterans of the Irish Defence Forces, as I searched for images of military personnel during the emergency,” says John. He continues: “From this small project grew a relationship which has now gone on for over a decade with veterans and the veteran/military community to this day. From restoring images for veterans to documenting all who I meet, this work has brought me all around the country, and the world. I have attended veterans’ coffee mornings in Cathal Brugha Barracks in Dublin. I have visited Camp Shamrock, the United Nations Post 2-45, in Lebanon. From Áras an Uachtaráin to the United Nations headquarters in New York and Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, I’ve been privileged that work has brought me to places and in the company of people that, otherwise, I never would have met.”

Becoming a colouriser

The term ‘colouriser’ is relatively new, says John, and describes a person – or more commonly now, an artificial intelligence application – who adds colour to black and white photographs, images or film. It was also back in his DIT days, around 10 years ago, that he discovered it. He had seen some of the colouring work that Doug Banks had done, and he was instantly intrigued. “The spark was ignited for me to do the same,” he says. “A college lecturer saw what I was doing and referred to the work as ‘a bastardisation of photography’. I do recall that the same lecturer would speak for an hour about an image of an empty bottle on a shelf; each to their own I suppose,” he jokes. “It became a feature of my work, and it really taught me to appreciate detail to the max; every small spec deserves and needs to be examined,” he says.
John’s approach to colouring does not include AI – he painstakingly hand colours everything. He explains the process: “If I was given an original image, I would physically clean and remove dust or dirt from the photo, then a high-resolution scan of the image is taken. Once the scan is complete, all other work will be on the digital file, so no harm is ever done to the original image. I would initially look over the entirety of the image, taking note of small details that initially might have gone missed. From there, editing of the original takes place, playing with exposure/highlights, different levels of brightness, and texture for example. Any damage or imperfections are addressed and fixed, all without using AI to be as true to the original as possible.
“Once the image is cleaned and repaired, I move onto the colouring process and, again, there is no AI used for this. The best way to describe how I colour is that I use a digital paint brush and pallet. I pull a reference image/colour select the colour, shade, and tone that is desired and literally colour in the area with a digital brush. Opacity is reduced so that the colour does not hide any detail in the original. This process allows a lot of room for fine detail work, which I feel adds more to the finished image.”
John says his favourite part of this entire process is the initial examination of an original image, which can reveal more than what is depicted by the main subject. “Over the years, I have more times than not, found details or hidden information that a family, for example, might never have noticed. By really looking, not just at the photo but into the photo, you can spot things that are not immediately obvious or are features of the main subject.”