French Dressing

e’ll be the first to admit, we’ve gone a little crazy on the old colourisation of 100-year-old pics around here of late.

Firstly, the bould Colin Doyle did a gallery, followed not long after by the even boulder Gary O’Brien.

It wasn’t long before we looked into the process ourselves, and thankfully, despite our complete lack of skill on this new frontier, the results have been more hit than miss.

Which brings us to the simple fact that Greystones was one lucky town to have the great Robert French move to Church Road at a time when he was pretty much the country’s number one photographer.

Travelling far and wide, French’s stunning black and white shots of the country in those early days of photography are now firmly ensconced in the National Library of Ireland.

And on the Guide.

We delved into the man’s background and history a little back in October 2015, so, we’ll just get straight to revisiting French’s wonderful shots.

In some cases, the colours in the cheek look truly wonderful, and at others, a tad on the Frankenstein side, but there’s definitely some magic to be found here…

You can check out the Robert French originals here, and more In Living Colour revisits here.