Final Images - Liverpool a not so changing city

  

Liverpool City Centre past and present! It is only during the editing and compilation of these images that I have realised Liverpool hasn't changed a great deal. Road layouts and the introduction of many street sign being the most obvious, structurally, my images aren't that different to the images of Liverpool past. What is evident also, is that Liverpool city centre was as busy in years gone by as it is now - roads still bustle with people and cars. Overall i'm reasonably happy with these images, my intention when shooting (knowing that it would be difficult to obtain perfectly matched images due to the differences in cameras) was to keep specific pre-determined landmarks within the same points in  both past and present images.

The images are layed out the way they are due to the fact that my images are rectangular and the images from past Liverpool are more square, by staggering the layout I felt less attention was drawn to this fact.

Re-photography attempt 1

So, it turns out that finding old images of the Norris Green estate isn't that easy, especially in any great number. Therefore I have decided to move out of the area where I grew up and into the city centre of Liverpool. I have found a number of images online that I think will be suitable for me to re-photograph. But my first attempt at re-photographing hasn't been in Liverpool, I decided to test the process whilst I was in Chester, shooting my emulation project. I figured this would be good practice and I own a book that contains a lot of old pictures from Chester. 

The book!

My images

1900's/2012

Top image:1900's Bottom image:2012

1900's/2012

Top image:1900's Bottom image:2012

Top image:1900's Bottom image:2012

I decided to keep the modern day images in keeping with the old images therefore they are also black and white, I felt that by doing this, the viewer is  more inclined to give the images more thought as there is no immediate eye catcher (as there would be if one image was in colour.) I found alligning the images at the point of shooting was a little difficult, buildings don't move but they do change as do pavements and fixtures. I tried my best to combat this whilst shooting, but some cropping and rotating has been done in photoshop afterwards.

Berenice Abbott and Eugene Atget

Berenice Abbott was an American Photographer who was introduced in 1925 to the work of Eugene Atget, she was so taken by his work that after his death Berenice aquired what was left of his work and went on to promote it heavily. Abbott wrote two books about Atget's work; The World of Atget (1964) and Atget, photographe de Paris(1930) and it is Abbottss continuous efforts that helped Atget gain international recognition.

Photographer research - Berenice Abbott

After looking more into the work of Berenice Abbott, I feel that it would be wronbg for me not to include her work in my blog! Abbott's images of New York that are shown below have such depth to them , it is as if you are transported to the time they were taken. The contrast and tonality of her images for me seems so perfect that had they been taken in modern day, I would fail to believe they hadn't had something done to them post production!

Rephotography - Further research

Another website I looked at for my research into rephotography was one called New York Changing.

http://www.newyorkchanging.com/

This is another wonderful and inspiring website for my city brief, which again shows all images in black and white, re-inforcing my decision to also shoot in the same manner. This series of images produced by Douglas Levere, takes Berencie Abbott's work from 1930's New York and replicates it in the modern day, showing the changes to that have happened over time to the city of New York. This is the same effect I hope to achieve with my images of Liverpool .

Rephotography - Further research

During my research into rephotography, I came across a brilliant article (interactive work) on the website for the McCord Museum in Montreal, Quebec.

http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/dq/intro-e.html

When you hover over the images you get a sound bite of how each image would have sounded at the time it was taken.

This website was a great find and leads me to the conclusion that when I shoot my images, they will also both be in black and white because your eye is not immediately drawn to one image over the other therefore each image is contemplated in more detail.

The City, new idea, rephotography!

So after having a good think about this project and where I was going with my initial ideas and where I could go with it from feedback, I decided I liked the idea of bringing old photographs into the equation, so I researched rephotography and I finally felt inspired!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/landscapes/what_are_rephotographs.shtml

Whilst researching rephotography the work of Sergey Larenkov has been brought to the fore. This is a photographer who we have seen the work of briefly, but I have no looked into in greater detail. Below are some of his images. Larenkov overlays old and new photographs and uses computer software to give a glimmer of the past in the modern day image, by editing them in such a way that the old image appears to be coming through the new one. I find Larenkov's images extremely thought provoking, they draw the viewer to think about history in a different way; by seeing it embedded in the present. My particular favourites are the images that he has integrated with those scenes from ww2 as they evoke more emotion in my opinion, given the fact that we all know how atrocious the war was.