Curragh postcards pre- and post-1922

The airbrushing of Nurse Elizabeth O’Farrell from the surrender photograph at Easter 1916 is one of the most documented and debated images of recent times. However, the airbrushing of photographs was nothing new. Airbrushing was an early method of retouching and colouring photographs which can be traced back as far as the late 1800s. The falsification of photographs has always been widespread. Motives for manipulating photographs are diverse and include political propaganda. A manipulated photograph could endow political fiction with an air of factual accuracy and was widespread in the late 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

The two photographs of the Curragh Water Tower are the same image, except that the British Union Jack on the left has been replaced by the Irish Tricolour. We can only guess the motive, but an ‘Irish’ image of the Curragh Camp would be more popular post-1922 than that of a ‘British’ reminder of a by-gone era.