In Living Colour
In the closing months of 2020, a photobook from Merrion Press, Old Ireland in Colour, sold 48,475 copies, grossing almost €1.14 million1 – an amazing feat given the relatively small market that Ireland’s population of 4.9 million provides. The book features nineteenth and twentieth century archival photographs of Ireland sourced from major national collections and colourised by John Breslin using DeOldify software. Accompanying the images is a text by historian Sarah-Anne Buckley. The trend for such colourisation is not limited to Ireland, with works such as Dan Jones and Marina Amaral’s The Colour of Time: a New History of the World 1860- 1950 (2018), prefiguring the success of this Irish title.2...Read the full article in the printed issue. Get OVER Journal 2
Image above by John Hinde
1 Martin Doyle, ‘John Delaney exposé top title as Old Ireland in Colour makes €1m sales,’ Irish Times, 5th January 2021.
