Photographs Of Photographs In The Place Where They Were Photographed
June 14, 2011 8:40 AM Subscribe
This is like 100x better than I expected.
posted by DU at 8:51 AM on June 14, 2011 [7 favorites]
posted by DU at 8:51 AM on June 14, 2011 [7 favorites]
The awesome just cancelled all my snark.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:52 AM on June 14, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:52 AM on June 14, 2011 [3 favorites]
That's really, really neat. I like the one with the swing.
posted by notsnot at 8:55 AM on June 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by notsnot at 8:55 AM on June 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
Thumbs up. Fantastico.
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:56 AM on June 14, 2011
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:56 AM on June 14, 2011
One thing I find surprisingly interesting is see how some of the flora has grown. Look at this one and notice how that triangular shaped bush has grown. (I have one of those and I swear it has not gained an inch in ten years).
posted by archivist at 8:57 AM on June 14, 2011 [4 favorites]
posted by archivist at 8:57 AM on June 14, 2011 [4 favorites]
Some of these make me really sad -- I feel like I'm looking at ghosts. But I still love it. Especially the one that reveals the house under construction: It's like a time travel x-ray.
Someone needs to do this with a photo that's like 80 or 100 years old.
posted by BlueJae at 8:57 AM on June 14, 2011 [2 favorites]
Someone needs to do this with a photo that's like 80 or 100 years old.
posted by BlueJae at 8:57 AM on June 14, 2011 [2 favorites]
I wonder if there are any cameras that tag the photo with orientation information as well as GPS data.. It seems like you could make an "iPad time portal" sorta thing if you kept all that info in the image metadata and then used some on-screen indicators to show where to move the iPad so the photo lines up.
posted by closetphilosopher at 8:59 AM on June 14, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by closetphilosopher at 8:59 AM on June 14, 2011 [3 favorites]
Man, some of these folks haven't rearranged their furniture in quite some time.
posted by gcbv at 9:00 AM on June 14, 2011
posted by gcbv at 9:00 AM on June 14, 2011
Man, this is bittersweet. The older I get - or, perhaps more importantly, the older my kids get - the more stuff like this really makes me sad. But the good kind of sad, if that makes any sense.
posted by jbickers at 9:00 AM on June 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by jbickers at 9:00 AM on June 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
Best.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:03 AM on June 14, 2011
posted by shakespeherian at 9:03 AM on June 14, 2011
Someone needs to do this with a photo that's like 80 or 100 years old.
Looking into the past
posted by vacapinta at 9:03 AM on June 14, 2011 [29 favorites]
Looking into the past
posted by vacapinta at 9:03 AM on June 14, 2011 [29 favorites]
This is cool. Although the captions are a tad cloying.
posted by TheAlarminglySwollenFinger at 9:04 AM on June 14, 2011
posted by TheAlarminglySwollenFinger at 9:04 AM on June 14, 2011
My step-daughter is crazy about the movie Somewhere In Time, and has a still from the movie on a keychain-fob-thingy. Last weekend we were on Mackinac Island, where a lot of the movie was filmed. So of course, we had to go to the tree where the two leads in the movie met, and take a picture of the still in front of that tree, aligning it as best we could.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:06 AM on June 14, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:06 AM on June 14, 2011 [2 favorites]
This is fucking awesome and makes me want to break out the embarrassing childhood photos like whoa.
posted by elizardbits at 9:09 AM on June 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by elizardbits at 9:09 AM on June 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
This is wonderful.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:16 AM on June 14, 2011
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:16 AM on June 14, 2011
It's amazing how little anything has changed in any of these photos. One person got a new stove. That's about it.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 9:16 AM on June 14, 2011
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 9:16 AM on June 14, 2011
BlueJae: Someone needs to do this with a photo that's like 80 or 100 years old.
I thought something similar to this was posted to Metafilter before, though I think it was blended photos, not people holding old photos over current locations.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:22 AM on June 14, 2011 [2 favorites]
I thought something similar to this was posted to Metafilter before, though I think it was blended photos, not people holding old photos over current locations.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:22 AM on June 14, 2011 [2 favorites]
I thought this was going to be, like, photographs of photographs of the Eiffel Tower taken in front of the Eiffel Tower. Which sounded boring. But this is better.
But I can't do this! My parents sold their house. Should I take old pictures of me and hold them up in "the same spot" in their new house?
posted by madcaptenor at 9:27 AM on June 14, 2011
But I can't do this! My parents sold their house. Should I take old pictures of me and hold them up in "the same spot" in their new house?
posted by madcaptenor at 9:27 AM on June 14, 2011
Thanks, hermitosis - I knew there was something similar.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:29 AM on June 14, 2011
posted by filthy light thief at 9:29 AM on June 14, 2011
This is neat.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:32 AM on June 14, 2011
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:32 AM on June 14, 2011
archivist: Look at this one and notice how that triangular shaped bush has grown
Not quite the picture my dirty mind expected...
Jokes aside... this is a great find
posted by Hairy Lobster at 9:34 AM on June 14, 2011
Not quite the picture my dirty mind expected...
Jokes aside... this is a great find
posted by Hairy Lobster at 9:34 AM on June 14, 2011
along the same lines across a large span of time (1870-2000) are the William Henry Jackson / John Fielder photos of Colorado:
http://www.heritageaspen.org/thenexh.html
Fielder's book on amazon.
posted by cristinacristinacristina at 9:39 AM on June 14, 2011 [2 favorites]
http://www.heritageaspen.org/thenexh.html
Fielder's book on amazon.
posted by cristinacristinacristina at 9:39 AM on June 14, 2011 [2 favorites]
I did one of these awhile back, and I absolutely thought I was the only person in the world to think of it when I did.
posted by tapesonthefloor at 9:44 AM on June 14, 2011
posted by tapesonthefloor at 9:44 AM on June 14, 2011
Yo, dawg, I heard you like photographs, so I - -
oh nevermind
posted by Ratio at 9:55 AM on June 14, 2011
oh nevermind
posted by Ratio at 9:55 AM on June 14, 2011
Weird -- I have known about these for years, and I always believed it was Metafilter that had steered me to them.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:06 AM on June 14, 2011
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:06 AM on June 14, 2011
Fabulous. I love the glimpse into the past these offer.
My step-daughter is crazy about the movie Somewhere In Time, and has a still from the movie on a keychain-fob-thingy.
When I was a girl (yeah, yeah, I know, ancient history), my Mom had her own mother's dress in a closet back in the sewing room. The full-length gown, hand-tailored with princess seams and tiny buttons all up the back, was grandma's bridesmaid dress from her best friend's wedding (and nothing like the taffeta monstrosities that pass for bridesmaid's gowns today), passed down to my mother, the eldest, because she'd admired it herself as a girl and played "dress up" in it.
After watching The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan, my sisters and I all ran back to the sewing room and fought each other to try that gown on. Though I was the youngest, I won, mostly because it fit me best (grandma was petite).
Of course, I put the gown on hoping that, like Lindsay Wagner, I'd magically travel back in time to this bygone era of elegance and etiquette where a handsome man had eyes only for me....*sigh*
I'm still here.
Fun fact: the handsome man? The Beastmaster!
posted by misha at 10:50 AM on June 14, 2011 [2 favorites]
My step-daughter is crazy about the movie Somewhere In Time, and has a still from the movie on a keychain-fob-thingy.
When I was a girl (yeah, yeah, I know, ancient history), my Mom had her own mother's dress in a closet back in the sewing room. The full-length gown, hand-tailored with princess seams and tiny buttons all up the back, was grandma's bridesmaid dress from her best friend's wedding (and nothing like the taffeta monstrosities that pass for bridesmaid's gowns today), passed down to my mother, the eldest, because she'd admired it herself as a girl and played "dress up" in it.
After watching The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan, my sisters and I all ran back to the sewing room and fought each other to try that gown on. Though I was the youngest, I won, mostly because it fit me best (grandma was petite).
Of course, I put the gown on hoping that, like Lindsay Wagner, I'd magically travel back in time to this bygone era of elegance and etiquette where a handsome man had eyes only for me....*sigh*
I'm still here.
Fun fact: the handsome man? The Beastmaster!
posted by misha at 10:50 AM on June 14, 2011 [2 favorites]
Now I know what to do with all the photos from my trip to D.C. when I was six. For no reason i can remember, I insisted on holding up the guidebook photos that matched where we were anytime my parents insisted on taking my picture (I was quite photo-shy at that point). My favorite one is of me, squinting, Washington Monument in the background, two-page spread photo of said monument open in the my lap.
I think I maybe thought, "I'm really here, see?"
posted by emhutchinson at 10:52 AM on June 14, 2011
I think I maybe thought, "I'm really here, see?"
posted by emhutchinson at 10:52 AM on June 14, 2011
This is very cool, although vacapinta's link is even cooler.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:56 AM on June 14, 2011
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:56 AM on June 14, 2011
I was at the Walker Art Center a few days ago, walking through the exhibit John Waters curated, "Absentee Landlord." One of the pieces he included in his exhibit was Yves Klein's "Suaire de Mondo Cane," a painting that has long haunted me.
Klein was an early conceptual artist, and so he often made the making of his pieces into an event. And so it was that he decided to paint the nude female form, but, rather than simply have a model take her clothes off and try to represent what he saw, he instead coated several models with blue paint (International Klein Blue, to be specific) and had them press up against hanging sheets of gauze. He directed this like a conductor while an orchestra played his own composition, which, typical of Klein, was just one note, played over and over.
Italian filmmakers Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi, and Gualtiero Jacopetti decided to film him doing this for their movie Mondo Cane, the first really popular exploitation documentary (it's the reason similar films are called "mondo" films). But these were not very nice people. Gualtiero Jacopetti, as an example, later made the naked racist "Africa Addio," and was actually tried for murder for having supposedly staged executions for the film. And so the Klein sequence was embedded in a film that was mostly a grotesque series of oddities from around the world, many quite suspect in authenticity. Klein himself was misrepresented in the film -- the music the orchestra plays is no longer his composition, but "More," the Academy Award-winning theme to the movie. Musicians and audience members leer at the models. If you've ever seen a movie in which a Beatnik paints directly onto a naked woman, this is the moment that started -- a ridiculous parody of Klein's actual work, which was often extraordinary.
Klein was so appalled at how his work appeared onscreen that he suffered a heart attack at "Mondo Cane's" screening. Two more followed, over the space of month, and he died from them at age 34.
So I was explaining all this to my friends, while looking at the actual work that is shown being made in "Mondo Cane." And suddenly I realized that I could actually pull up the video of its creation on YouTube on my iPad. So I did. The last shot of this film clip is the models stepping away from the painting, revealing the completed work, and I held up my iPad to show it, and the painting right behind it.
Suddenly I felt like I was living in a haunted world, in which the ghosts of our past live on now, through the records they left behind, which can be accessed immediately in a way that directly interacts with objects or places in the real world. We're no longer creatures who live mostly in the present. When we want to, in a place, or with a person, or in front of an object, we will be able to open the past that comes with them and peer into it. Our ghosts travel with us now.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:02 AM on June 14, 2011 [6 favorites]
Klein was an early conceptual artist, and so he often made the making of his pieces into an event. And so it was that he decided to paint the nude female form, but, rather than simply have a model take her clothes off and try to represent what he saw, he instead coated several models with blue paint (International Klein Blue, to be specific) and had them press up against hanging sheets of gauze. He directed this like a conductor while an orchestra played his own composition, which, typical of Klein, was just one note, played over and over.
Italian filmmakers Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi, and Gualtiero Jacopetti decided to film him doing this for their movie Mondo Cane, the first really popular exploitation documentary (it's the reason similar films are called "mondo" films). But these were not very nice people. Gualtiero Jacopetti, as an example, later made the naked racist "Africa Addio," and was actually tried for murder for having supposedly staged executions for the film. And so the Klein sequence was embedded in a film that was mostly a grotesque series of oddities from around the world, many quite suspect in authenticity. Klein himself was misrepresented in the film -- the music the orchestra plays is no longer his composition, but "More," the Academy Award-winning theme to the movie. Musicians and audience members leer at the models. If you've ever seen a movie in which a Beatnik paints directly onto a naked woman, this is the moment that started -- a ridiculous parody of Klein's actual work, which was often extraordinary.
Klein was so appalled at how his work appeared onscreen that he suffered a heart attack at "Mondo Cane's" screening. Two more followed, over the space of month, and he died from them at age 34.
So I was explaining all this to my friends, while looking at the actual work that is shown being made in "Mondo Cane." And suddenly I realized that I could actually pull up the video of its creation on YouTube on my iPad. So I did. The last shot of this film clip is the models stepping away from the painting, revealing the completed work, and I held up my iPad to show it, and the painting right behind it.
Suddenly I felt like I was living in a haunted world, in which the ghosts of our past live on now, through the records they left behind, which can be accessed immediately in a way that directly interacts with objects or places in the real world. We're no longer creatures who live mostly in the present. When we want to, in a place, or with a person, or in front of an object, we will be able to open the past that comes with them and peer into it. Our ghosts travel with us now.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:02 AM on June 14, 2011 [6 favorites]
Appalling as it may have been in that context, the "performance" as filmed is still pretty breathtaking, Astro. Thanks for that.
posted by tapesonthefloor at 11:34 AM on June 14, 2011
posted by tapesonthefloor at 11:34 AM on June 14, 2011
Yeah. If you cut out the leering, it's beautifully made.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:38 AM on June 14, 2011
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:38 AM on June 14, 2011
I love these. They're heart-warming & sad at the same time. "Me, before I knew how difficult life can be." (Apologies for projecting my angst.)
posted by PepperMax at 11:52 AM on June 14, 2011
posted by PepperMax at 11:52 AM on June 14, 2011
A lovely mix of nostalgia and pathos. Bet it's getting to us older mefites more.
posted by merocet at 12:01 PM on June 14, 2011
posted by merocet at 12:01 PM on June 14, 2011
AZ, did you see the Yves Klein exhibit the Walker did at the beginning of the year? They had several of Klein's Mondo Cane pieces as well as the bit from Mondo Cane that features Klein.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:05 PM on June 14, 2011
posted by shakespeherian at 12:05 PM on June 14, 2011
AZ, did you see the Yves Klein exhibit the Walker did at the beginning of the year?
Oh, yes. Although I am astonished that the Walker allows me anywhere near Klein, especially the Mondo Cande shroud, seeing as I once was in a web movie in which I destroyed that piece.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:19 PM on June 14, 2011
Oh, yes. Although I am astonished that the Walker allows me anywhere near Klein, especially the Mondo Cande shroud, seeing as I once was in a web movie in which I destroyed that piece.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:19 PM on June 14, 2011
I love this idea...looking at some of these photos made me tear up a little. Wow. So simple and powerful at once.
posted by Shfishp at 12:43 PM on June 14, 2011
posted by Shfishp at 12:43 PM on June 14, 2011
Aieeeeeeeeeeee! Ghosts!
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 4:45 PM on June 14, 2011
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 4:45 PM on June 14, 2011
How about Two Photos of the same People in the same Places across time.
posted by strangememes at 12:23 PM on June 15, 2011
posted by strangememes at 12:23 PM on June 15, 2011
How about Two Photos of the same People in the same Places across time.
Those reconstructions feel really false to me, compared to the photos-within-photos that are the subject of this post. As much as the reconstructions delighted me when I first saw them (and this link is the very best of that trend), there's something really haunting about photographs putting people back where they used to be - and showing a definite contrast in the space as it once was compared to now. As others have said, it's almost ghostly, where the reconstructions are a very heightened kind of dress up parade.
I especially like the contrast of the old photos on film compared to the digital photographs putting the old pictures in context. The reconstructions just seem more manipulated into making those photos look like old film ones.
posted by crossoverman at 5:00 AM on June 16, 2011
Those reconstructions feel really false to me, compared to the photos-within-photos that are the subject of this post. As much as the reconstructions delighted me when I first saw them (and this link is the very best of that trend), there's something really haunting about photographs putting people back where they used to be - and showing a definite contrast in the space as it once was compared to now. As others have said, it's almost ghostly, where the reconstructions are a very heightened kind of dress up parade.
I especially like the contrast of the old photos on film compared to the digital photographs putting the old pictures in context. The reconstructions just seem more manipulated into making those photos look like old film ones.
posted by crossoverman at 5:00 AM on June 16, 2011
And this is one of the reasons I love the Internet.
posted by dapperkoala at 1:16 AM on June 17, 2011
posted by dapperkoala at 1:16 AM on June 17, 2011
Don't you hate it when you find something extremely cool on the interwebs, and you think "ooooo, this'd be an awesome FPP on mefi!" and then you go and check, and someone beat you to it? I hate that... and yet I love it, too. Reminds me why I love the MetaFilter like I do.
This site is fantastic, in a delightful, wistful way. I love the one with the old bike, and the newer, faster bike. And the one of the older man who's since lost his wife... wow. Tears.
Awesome post. Thanks.
posted by flyingsquirrel at 11:15 AM on June 28, 2011
This site is fantastic, in a delightful, wistful way. I love the one with the old bike, and the newer, faster bike. And the one of the older man who's since lost his wife... wow. Tears.
Awesome post. Thanks.
posted by flyingsquirrel at 11:15 AM on June 28, 2011
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posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 8:43 AM on June 14, 2011