The true colour of history
Historian’s fascinating colourised pictures of a bygone era cast new light on a long lost way of life in Ireland
AHISTORY enthusiast is casting fresh light on a bygone era of Irish life by bringing old black and white photographs to glorious technicolour life – with some of them even showing movement – using modern colourisation techniques and artificial intelligence software.
Rob Cross has won legions of fans for his work on dozens of centuryold images, including pictures of Michael Collins, the Titanic and even the Dáil chamber.
At first simply adding colour to the old black and white images – many of them from the National Library of Ireland collection – he then began using an artificial intelligence computer software which analyses the picture and animates parts of it so that it appears to ‘move’ as if it were a short video.
He used the technique to great effect on the last known picture of the Titanic, which he colourised and, if viewed on Mr Cross’s Twitter page, can now be seen bobbing gently on the waves.
The original photo – which shows a small boat in the foreground as it passes Crosshaven in Cork – was taken by Jesuit priest Fr Francis Browne. He sailed on the ill-fated liner on the first leg of its journey from Southampton to Cobh (then known as Queenstown) where he disembarked and went no further.
Mr Cross, an architectural technician and designer based in Dublin,
‘I wanted to get people thinking what’s around them’
is also using his restoration techniques to highlight how much magnificent architecture has been lost in the past century.
In one example, he shows his colourised, restored picture of the magnificent, turreted, red-brick Alexandra College standing across from what is now the National Concert Hall on Earlsfort Terrace in central Dublin. The building is long since gone, replaced now by a modern office block and hotel – something he shows to great effect with before and after pictures.
‘I don’t want to just colourise or restore pictures, I want people to think about what has been there and what it has been replaced with,’ Mr Cross said.
‘I’m originally from Limerick, so I’ve seen over the years the Georgian buildings being destroyed, and shopping centres being built, and the city itself dying because of shopping centres outside the town.
‘I wanted to use the social media platform to encourage people to appreciate their built environment, and especially the old Georgian and Victorian buildings.’
He says that apart from old buildings being torn down, many that survive are covered up with new plasterwork, paint, wires and other clutter that, once stripped back, could make towns much more pleasant places to live. This led him to create images of his native city’s main street.
‘I just wanted to get people thinking about where they’re living and what’s around them,’ he said.
Some of Mr Cross’s images have been shared hundreds of thousands of times online, and many local councillors and other politicians follow his account.
‘It’s good that they’re actually engaging,’ he said. ‘Because they will legislate and it gets the discussion going.’ He insists that his recent tweet featuring a restored picture of an empty Dáil chamber was not making a political point.
Mr Cross does most of his work on images from the National Library, which are in the public domain. He uses image software to clean up the images to get rid of any dirt marks, scratches or hazing, before colourising them and eventually adding sound and motion to some of them.
However, he says he does not want to monetise his work, even though he often gets people asking to buy copies. Instead, he will send them on the high-resolution image and ask them to make a donation to a charity.
Other images that have been a big hit online include his colourised image of pigs being driven through the streets of Youghal, Co. Cork and Michael Collins’s brother Seán beside the Big Fella’s coffin.
He is particularly proud of his work on pictures of the Limerick
Soviet and the burning of Cork.
Teachers often contact Mr Cross asking whether they can use his images as a teaching resource and he is happy to oblige. One woman contacted him over an image of a street in Dublin’s Liberties where she grew up, while a novelist from Cork wanted to discuss a picture from which she was using a detail as part of a passage in a book.
With development continuing apace it is more important than ever to appreciate the fine buildings we have even as new ones fly up. ‘It can be like death by a thousand cuts – before you know it, it’s gone,’ said Mr Cross. ‘This segment of your streetscape, it can quickly go to rack and ruin from absentee landlords, or someone changes the signage, or someone plastered over it, changed the windows, changed the roof or got rid of the parapet, and before you know it…a Georgian street is gone.’