Newfoundland history in colour: Artist turns passion for restoring old photos into a business

Gerard Nash's passion for restoring old photos started about 15 years ago when he was putting together a family tree.

Decades of time had not been kind to many of the old portraits he was sifting through, so he decided to look into getting them restored. Realizing the high expense, he decided to take matters into his own hands and learn how to restore them himself.

Now retired, Nash has immersed himself in the craft of colourizing and restoring old photographs, both for his own enjoyment and as a home business.

Through his website thephotomender.com, Nash provides customers a chance to turn damaged black and white photos into vivid works of art.

He said the response has been great, and most people love his work. However, there are purists who say adding colour to old photos is disrespectful to the subject and the artists who took the picture.

"I say to them, you know these people didn't live their lives in black and white — they lived their lives in colour," he said.

"All I'm trying to do is let you see them how they were seen by their peers and see the world as they saw the world when they were alive."

Nash uses Photoshop software to restore and colourize the photos, a process which can take several hours from start to finish. He said some projects are easier than others.

"The way Photoshop works is you have to break everything down into a separate layer," he told CBC.

"So I would have to separate out the sky, separate out the trees — and that's not always easy to do because older photographs don't always have that crispness. Some tips of the trees are going to blend into the sky, so you how do you separate that out? It's very difficult to do."

Researching the past 

The process of picking the colours can be a bit of a guessing game for black and white photos.

Nash does as much research as he can to get them right, including looking up examples of clothing from the time and examining the brightness of people's eyes to determine their colour.

"I get as much information as I can," he said. "I'll say, 'OK I have a light colour from the 1920s, so I'll think about what kind of colours were in vogue at the time and then have a guess at it from there'."

Nash's favourite subjects are of old Newfoundland and Labrador, especially the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. In fact, photos he restored have been used in two documentaries about the Regiment, including CBC's Trail of the Caribou.

Nash says customers often have emotional responses to the work he does, but nothing comes close to a photo he colourized for for the family of a 99-year-old man. 

The black and white photo was of the man during the First World War, when he was just a baby sitting on his father's lap. The man had never met his father, so when he got to see the bright coloured photo of his father and family, he was extremely touched.

"The family brought it up to him at the old folk's home and said 'you would not believe it, he wouldn't let go of it, he just kept looking at the picture with a big smile on his face'," said Nash.

"People tell me that they tend to stare at the picture a lot longer when it's in colour, it really brings it to life and makes it seem more realistic. You notice things in the picture that you don't notice when it's in black and white, because everything kind of blends together."

Business has been good for The Photo Mender lately, and Nash says the low Canadian dollar means he's been getting a lot of calls from people in the United States who are interested in commissioning works. The New York Publishing Company even has him working on some book covers to be released later this year.

Nash has also launched a Twitter account to share some of his favourites, and is also considering publishing a coffee table book and a calendar as well.

In the meantime, Nash will continue working on both projects of passions and commissioned works for his customers. As a history buff, he said both types of work are quite enjoyable.

"It's nice knowing the story behind it," he said. "That gives me great satisfaction."

Check out more of Nash's work below: