One evening back in 2017, Prince Wang, founder of the Facebook page “Old Taiwanese Photographs in Color” (fb.com/oldtwcolor) and an incorrigible enthusiast of Taiwanese culture and history, retrieved from his hard drive an old black-and-white photograph of the second Meiji Bridge (built over the Keelung River in 1933 and leading to the Shinto Taiwan Grand Shrine, located where the Grand Hotel Taipei stands today) and used Photoshop to colorize it by hand. He was aware that there was AI-based automated colorizing software, but he reckoned: “That has to use an algorithm to guess the colors, so the effect is going to be less than ideal. Also, random guessing just creates confusion about the past. So why don’t I do it by hand!” When he finished colorizing the photo, he found it had turned out better than expected, and he posted it online. Much to his surprise, by morning his post had got thousands of likes and shares, and some neti­zens were asking for more photos.

The independent bookstore GJ Taiwan, run by Prince Wang, is devoted to promoting memories of Taiwan’s history.

Rediscovering memories of Taiwan

“We are a team that seeks to make historical memories of Taiwan more widely accessible,” says Wang, “and colorizing old photos is one of the ways we have tried to do this. We aim to close the gap between Taiwan and its history, and the results so far have been quite good.”

Wang Tso-jung is a scholar of culture and history who often posts videos on YouTube in which he discusses the daily lives of ordinary Taiwanese in the era of Japanese rule. He has worked with Prince Wang on a series of books presenting colorized versions of works by photographers Deng Nanguang (1907–1971) and Li Huozeng (1912–1975). He explains that because black-and-white photos provide a different visual experience than people today are accustomed to, there is a sense of distance between them and the viewer. “We wanted to eliminate this sense of detachment and restore a sense of reality, so that people can get a step closer to the past.” When the photographers of the past released the shutter on their cameras, they were simply taking pictures of things that interested them and recording daily life. Wang Tso-jung’s commitment to colorizing these old photos comes from a desire to use these images that are now part of the historical record to present the past in a way that is livelier and more accessible to viewers.

As colorizing old photographs became a trend, many people expressed an interest in trying it themselves. Prince Wang set up the “Old Taiwanese Photographs in Color” Facebook page to share his experiences so that people who wanted to colorize photos could first study up. In this community there are experts from a variety of fields, including architecture, artifacts, clothing, and folk customs, and their discussions help colorizers to more accurately replicate historical colors. “This process of discussion is in fact very meaningful, enabling us to accumulate information. I hope that in the future we can build a database of Taiwanese historical colors.”

When Prince Wang was colorizing his first black-and-white photo, of Taipei’s Meiji Bridge, he learned that the stone used was granite imported from Japan. (courtesy of Prince Wang)

For this portrait of a Siraya indigenous woman with her baby, Wang says that he only noticed the bracelet on the child’s wrist after he began colorizing the image. (from The 19th Century Formosa in Color)

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)

Research is the key

“The first step in colorization is research, because you have to know exactly what it is that appears in the photo,” says Wang Tso-jung.

Prince Wang cites the example of a wedding photo taken by Deng Nanguang for the Deng family of Beipu. There were two flags attached to the wedding vehicle: One of them was easily recognizable as the national flag of Japan, but the other could not be identified from the black-and-white image. Only after making many inquiries did Prince Wang learn that the wedding took place on the tenth anniversary of the founding of the State of Manchuria (Manchukuo), and he surmised that the other flag must be the national flag of that regime. Another example is a stage performance in a photo by Deng—he and Wang Tso-jung spent a great deal of time trying to figure out which work was being performed. Or again, what color was a Taipei public bus shot by Li Huozeng? How should the Mazu palanquin in an image taken by Deng Nanguang be colorized? In a photograph of a Japanese-era Shinto festival, what shade of blue were the ritual garments worn by the people shouldering the palanquin?

The two Wangs are by no means casual when it comes to the details of daily life in these old photographs. They do meticulous research, which Prince Wang describes as like “reassembling a huge memory puzzle.” Wang Tso-jung says that the two of them are often like detectives, carefully weaving together strands of information to flesh out an answer. At times like these, they ask questions of friends from all walks of life, such as architecture expert Ling Tzung-kuei, folklore and ritual specialist Tsai Yi-chu, as well as experts in transportation, military affairs, and artifacts of daily life. “I can’t swear that we get everything 100% right, but we try to use accurate colors to the best of our ability, because this will affect how people, ten, 20 or even 50 years from now understand these things,” says Wang Tso-jung.

In the colorized version of this photo by Li Huozeng of a noodle vendor at the old night market in Taipei’s Jiancheng Circle, we can clearly distinguish the deep-fried egg noodles piled up on the left-hand side of the image. (from Caihui Li Huozeng and Kanjian Li Huozeng)

Prince Wang’s approach to colorization is to duplicate the image in layers of different colors, and then use Photoshop’s eraser tool to gradually remove colors to achieve the desired hue.

Methods of research

From the start Prince Wang has insisted on colorizing photos manually, and Wang Tso-jung too opposes AI colorization. He cites the example of an image of a book and newspaper kiosk taken in the Marunouchi district of Tokyo by Deng Nanguang. An electric streetcar is passing by in the background, and Japanese streetcars were all green, but somehow the AI program made the car red. He wondered why the program would choose red, and it was only after studying the issue for a while that he realized that AI requires a lot of data to learn, and at that time the AI software and database did not have sufficient information about East Asian artifacts, so the program probably drew on data about trolley cars in San Francisco, leading to a historical absurdity.

People often ask Wang Tso-jung how to research colors, and he summarizes several avenues of approach. One can refer to color picture postcards from the ­Japanese era, although these were also hand-tinted and therefore often have errors. A second, more accurate method is to consult color photographs taken in Taiwan after World War II by American military personnel. A third way is to find descriptions in written documents. One can also ask elderly people. For example, Deng Nanguang’s son Deng Shiguang appears in his photos from time to time, so the best way to judge colors in those images is to ask Deng Shiguang. The last technique is to refer to surviving artifacts. This is the most accurate way to determine colors, but since the photos date back many years and objects disappear over time, it is also the most difficult.

Street vendors are part of daily life in Taiwan. The most striking things about this Japanese-era vendor’s stall are the hanging filter, similar to today’s cold drip coffee filters, in the upper part of the picture, and the wooden sign in the upper right corner telling customers what time the food will be ready. (from Caihui Li Huozeng)

A street hawker selling traditional “bamboo cicada” toys. (from Caihui Li Huozeng)

Shuanglian Station on the old Taipei–Tamsui rail line. (from Caihui Li Huozeng)

A labor of love

Prince Wang turns on his computer to demonstrate how he colorizes pictures. The basic idea is to replicate the image in various different colors and arrange these in layers, and then to use Photoshop’s eraser tool to gradually remove colors from different layers to bring out the desired hue at each spot. The method is simple, and the colorizer just has to take care to create no incongruities or discontinuities in order for the final image to be convincing. He shows us a photo of the Lyu-­Chuan Canal in Taichung, with the banks lined with willow trees, for which each leaf had to be individually colorized by hand. To get to this level of quality, says Wang, “the most important thing is that you love what you are doing.”

Prince Wang, who has colorized thousands of photographs, says that the one that gives him the greatest satisfaction is an image that he showed to Deng Shiguang, now over 90 years old, to which Deng responded: “Fantastic! It looks like everyone has come to life.” Wang Tso-jung too has shared colorized photos with people in their eighties and found that on seeing them, these seniors recall the days of their youth and their manner changes palpably. “These colorized photographs are also dedicated to the younger days of today’s elders, because without their arduous efforts when they were young, we wouldn’t have what we have today.”

Photographs convey the stories of their eras and the times through which we have lived. Old images capture Taiwan’s past: We live on an island of stories, and these colorized old photos vividly tell the tales of their times.

Many elders have memories of catching goldfish in night markets during the era of Japanese rule. (from Caihui Deng Nanguang)

The building that housed this branch of the Hikari Restaurant in the former Taihei neighborhood of Taipei was located at the intersection of today’s Yanping North Road and Nanjing West Road. (from Caihui Li Huozeng)