Things change....
August 13, 2012 8:21 PM   Subscribe

Then and Now Photography...
posted by HuronBob (20 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Okay, I went in thinking "this again?" but wow that's pretty swell. Nice twist.
posted by cashman at 8:35 PM on August 13, 2012


I wonder - Why don't they bother putting all those nice little details on the facades of brick buildings anymore?
posted by dunkadunc at 9:03 PM on August 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


Very cool, but I keep looking for the Tardis.
posted by Isadorady at 9:33 PM on August 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


dunkadunc: "I wonder - Why don't they bother putting all those nice little details on the facades of brick buildings anymore"

"Efficiency", I believe, is the catchphrase that fucks over all hope for aesthetic niceties. Do those little details cost extra? Do they maximize shareholder profits? NO?! Then get rid of 'em.

Modern efficiency is why we can't have nice things. Literally.
posted by barnacles at 9:49 PM on August 13, 2012 [7 favorites]


Barnacles pretty much has it. Look at any brick building pre 1950s and you'll notice detailed brickwork. I'm pretty much obsessed with it anywhere I go.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 10:00 PM on August 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


I love these.
The Red Owl Store sign is pretty great.
posted by Mezentian at 10:18 PM on August 13, 2012



I wonder - Why don't they bother putting all those nice little details on the facades of brick buildings anymore?

One reason is because they get ugly over time. Another is that they sometimes start falling off.

Our "delightful architectural detail" is someone else's unsaleable albatross.
posted by gjc at 10:32 PM on August 13, 2012


Iv'e been looking at the Department of Labor pages on historical statistics particularly this and this and it doesn't paint a pretty picture for the people who built buildings at the beginning of the 20th century.

There were no safety regulations, no unions. Bricklayers were making pennies. There was no unemployment or workers' compensation. No retirement benefits, no health insurance. In 1900, 1.7 million children between the ages of 10-15 worked.

We don't want people to die in construction accidents and people refuse to live in squalor, so we all must suffer the lack of detailed brickwork on even the most mundane building.

And yeah, in NYC we have scaffolds everywhere because that stuff just starts falling off. My building has been involved in some sort of epic multi year re-pointing debacle, every time we take down the scaffold we have to put them back up.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:38 PM on August 13, 2012


This would be even better with some sort of slider to fade back and forth between the two images.
posted by crapmatic at 11:26 PM on August 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


This example from Detroit amazes me (from a post about a Detroit News archives tumblr):

Jefferson Avenue, Detroit, 1964: pic
Jefferson Avenue, Detroit, 2009: Google street view
(The white brick building was the Fox hardware store in the first picture)
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 12:46 AM on August 14, 2012 [2 favorites]




This wasn't what I expected, but in a good way. Bookmarked.
posted by tommasz at 5:07 AM on August 14, 2012


Manual labor was super cheap. Now we pay workers a more or less livable wage, so fancy brickwork is too expensive. Wait a decade or two, it'll probably become affordable again.
posted by ook at 5:10 AM on August 14, 2012 [1 favorite]


What happened to the tall guy's right pant leg shadow?
He's standing at an angle where the shadows from both legs are in-line with each other. Note how the shadow from his left leg casts directly onto the inside of his right leg.

In contrast, the shorter guy is standing turned more face-on to the sun, thus casting discrete shadows from both legs.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:21 AM on August 14, 2012 [1 favorite]


The tall guy also appears to be lifting his leg outward for some reason, which would add to his being more inline to the sun.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:23 AM on August 14, 2012


Uh no. I mean what happened to that guy's pants shadow in the before vs the after. It's completely different.
posted by DU at 6:32 AM on August 14, 2012


Ah! Yes, I see what you mean. Yeah...that's not good at all. It looks like he simply shopped the same shadow line all the way down the lower leg. He obviously didn't try to recreate the actual form of the shadow from the original. That's sloppy
posted by Thorzdad at 6:43 AM on August 14, 2012


If you want to get real picky, the new right shoe (our left) on the fellow is just a mirror of the other fellows left shoe (our right). Or so it appears...

But...if I was the owner of the photograph, I'd rather have those inconsistencies than an area where the photo itself had been damaged.
posted by Atreides at 6:45 AM on August 14, 2012


If you want to get real picky, the new right shoe (our left) on the fellow is just a mirror of the other fellows left shoe (our right). Or so it appears...

Actually, I think it's just a direct copy of the shorter guy's right (our left) shoe.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:55 PM on August 14, 2012


So it is...good spot.
posted by Atreides at 2:42 PM on August 14, 2012


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