Details you can only see in color
Colorizing old photos is not simply a matter of applying colors.
“From a legal perspective, 50 years after the moment the shutter is pressed, the only rights that remain in connection with a photograph are the ‘moral rights of the author,’ so all we have to do to use a photo is disclose the name of the photographer,” explains Prince Wang. He has thought carefully about how colorizers can best interpret images. “They ought to take account of the feelings of the photographer’s family members, otherwise they will be showing a lack of courtesy.”
There is also the issue of “restoring history.” For the photo of the Meiji Bridge that was Prince Wang’s first colorizing project, he didn’t have an accurate grasp of the correct colors. He asked for help from Yao Mingwei, editor-in-chief of Kunpu, a quarterly magazine devoted to Taiwanese and Japanese culture, and learned that the granite used for the Meiji Bridge was imported from Japan, and was the same kind of stone as is used in today’s National Diet Building in Japan. With this clue in hand, he was able to refer to images of that building and accurately colorize the old photo.
Wang has also colorized portraits of members of the Siraya indigenous people, taken by the Scottish photographer John Thomson (1837–1921). For one portrait of a woman holding her baby son, which Wang had seen hundreds of times before, it was only when he began colorizing the image that he noticed that there is a bracelet on the child’s wrist. After consulting with Alak Akatuang, an expert on Siraya culture, Wang came to understand that the bracelet was made with the ramie string that the mother had used to tie off her son’s umbilical cord at birth. This ramie was rolled together with other fibers to form a fine string which was then threaded through beads made of Job’s tears, and the bracelet served as an amulet to protect the child. Such stories, which Wang never tires of telling, are only known because of details discovered in the colorization process.
In his collaboration with Wang Tso-jung, Prince Wang takes care of the colorization process while Wang Tso-jung handles research. After receiving a photograph Prince Wang first does a preliminary colorization, and then he and Wang Tso-jung discuss any parts of the image about which they have concerns, or they ask other experts for advice. “Since we want to promote historical memories, we have to be responsible to history, for which the most important thing is fact-checking and evidence,” says Prince Wang.
Wang Tso-jung says that research is the most important thing. Whether the colors used are accurate or not will affect how history is understood in the future, so special care must be taken to get them right.
Wang Tso-jung cites this photo with a Tokyo streetcar in the background as an example of the importance of getting colors right. AI colorization had made the streetcar red, based on data about San Francisco trolley cars. Such mistakes can lead to historical absurdities. (from Caihui Deng Nanguang, a book of colorized photographs by Deng Nanguang)
A kindergarten sports day. In the background is today’s National Taiwan Museum, located in 228 Peace Memorial Park. Wang Tso-jung’s research revealed that the children are playing a game called piñata, in which small sandbags are thrown to break a suspended brightly colored papier-mâché ball. According to Japanese custom, the students were divided into red and white teams. (from Caihui Deng Nanguang)