Despite the famously uncooperative Irish weather, John Hinde’s postcards of Ireland featured bright sunshine and blue skies, a country seemingly peopled entirely with redheads, happy donkeys carrying turf, and charming cottages that appeared to grow upward from the earth itself. Cars and sweaters were in primary colours, and scarlet rhododendrons sprang up in the unlikeliest of places.

 

John Hinde had a clear vision: ‘We need to be uplifted rather than depressed. To me pictures should always convey a positive, good feeling, something which makes people happy, which makes them smile, which makes them appreciate some tenderness.’

 

In these postcards, the world is a sunnier, less complicated and more colourful place. Join Paul Kelly as he returns to John Hinde’s Ireland on a photographic pilgrimage, capturing some places that have changed forever, and some that are just the same.