The wonders of AI technology ...

This morning I woke up to an email from my buddy Dave in Vancouver Island, with the message ~ “I asked CHATGPT to restore the John Kerr image and it came up with this :”

John Kerr was my granduncle, born on the 9 August 1897 and was killed during WWI in The Somme, France on 4 February 1917. This is the only photograph in existence of John, and it has evolved over 25 years to what Dave has created now via AI.

The story of John Kerr's photo …

Many years ago, during my teens I had the unenviable task of clearing out the attic in my grandmother’s house. It was not a pleasurable assignment, in fact, it was truly awful. I think for many days afterwards I was coughing up and sneezing out decades of coal dust and perhaps a few other nasty things. During the clear-out, I came across a photo that had been printed on what was then a very fragile piece of card measuring about 10” x 20”, I learned from my grandmother that it was a photo of John Kerr, her older brother.

Much later during the early 1990’s after a visit to Scotland, I brought the photo over to Canada. By this time, it had deteriorated even further to the point it had broken up into dozens of random sized pieces. It was around the early 2000’s, I decided to see if the photo could be salvaged. I gave all the bits to a professional illustrator who I worked with, to see if he could produce some magic with it. Using a high-quality scanner along with enormous patience and tremendous skill, he brought all the pieces together and created a high-quality scan of the assembled parts. From there with the aid of a graphics/photo software, he carefully and seamlessly blended all the parts together. Below is the impressive result, with John in the uniform of the Drake Battalion of the Royal Naval Division.

I have been fortunate to have visited John’s grave in France twice, during April 2000 and June 2004. Below is a photo of his grave at Hamel Military Cemetery, taken in June 2004, with his photo, and one of his parents James Kerr (12 March 1866 ~ 2 February 1926) and Agnes Guthrie Caldwell (26 March 1867 ~ 4 March 1930), who visited his grave during the early 1920’s.

Below are the blogs relating to John Kerr, click on the image or links below …

https://southshoretidewatch.blogspot.com/2017/02/rememdered-after-100-years.html

 

https://southshoretidewatch.blogspot.com/2024/06/euro-2024-somme-and-family-war-graves.html