Flickr: Looking into the Past

January 28, 2010 3:20 PM

Flickr: Looking into the Past, a photography pool featuring images where there is a single image with the past overlapping the present somehow.
posted by blue_beetle (17 comments total)

via
posted by blue_beetle at 3:21 PM on January 28, 2010

These are neat.

Having recently read about how automobiles claimed roads for themselves and the crime of "jaywalking" was invented, I am struck by the ones showing large clusters of people just standing in the road. Eg this and the next one.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:35 PM on January 28, 2010 [2 favorites]

OK, these are great. I sort of started doing this in my former neighborhood, but my photoshop skills are lacking. I've got the old and new pics, but marrying them up is hard.
posted by fixedgear at 3:46 PM on January 28, 2010

I didn't quite get the concept until I started flipping through the photos.

Very cool stuff.
posted by muddgirl at 3:48 PM on January 28, 2010

yeah this is cool.
posted by Lutoslawski at 3:51 PM on January 28, 2010

Very cool. Would like to do something like this myself.
posted by Sova at 4:00 PM on January 28, 2010

This is great.
posted by eyeballkid at 4:07 PM on January 28, 2010

I saw this too, it's really amazing and inspiring. I may have to do something similar with the old photos someone gifted me from my hometown when I go back next.
posted by gemmy at 4:07 PM on January 28, 2010

This is really neat stuff.
posted by gomichild at 4:07 PM on January 28, 2010

These are awesome. I like the ones with the people holding up the old photographs best.
posted by fight or flight at 4:11 PM on January 28, 2010

It would be cool to flip it and go back and find photos of people holding up a hand, or holding an object or a picture, then photoshopping a picture of the present, as if the person in the past was holding up a window to the future.
posted by cashman at 4:21 PM on January 28, 2010 [3 favorites]

This is my hardcore pornography.
posted by fire&wings at 4:25 PM on January 28, 2010

Very cool.
posted by TooFewShoes at 4:29 PM on January 28, 2010

Fans of this might also enjoy David Dunlap's Then/Now series (NYC) or Alden Cudanin's Toronto Before site (Toronto, natch).
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:21 PM on January 28, 2010

The fairly recent ones showing a child superimposed on a now-empty yard are very sad to me. They all seem somehow to suggest that the child has died, even if I have no reason to believe that that is the case.
posted by agentofselection at 9:08 PM on January 28, 2010

These are awesome. I like the ones with the people holding up the old photographs best.

yes.
posted by valdesm at 2:28 AM on January 29, 2010

Oh my gosh these are great. Thanks blue_beetle.
posted by cowbellemoo at 10:45 AM on January 29, 2010