Then and Now

I love it when this happens—a "then and now" pair.

Zander with Lulu, 2007. Photo by dad Mike.

Xander (he spells it differently now) with Ziggy, 2020.
Photo by girlfriend Alyssa.

Unlike Ze Frank's "Young Me / Now Me," this wasn't done on purpose at all—Xander and Alyssa sent me the lower picture, and it reminded me of the upper one. Xander had remembered the similarity too.

I've always had a particular fondness for then-and-now pictures. You can see changes over time. I liked Richard Linklater's movie Boyhood, created as the actors aged naturally over time. A book I've always admired but never owned is Second View: The Rephotographic Survey Project (Amazon Canada) in which several photographers including Mark Klett revisited the tripod-holes of various 19th-century pioneer photographers of the old West.

Ziggy, a rescue who loves to cuddle, is a new addition to the family. Lulu, who was also a rescue, is just about to turn 14. She's still well and getting along okay, and she lives with me—although that might not be her first choice!

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Patrick Murphy: "Here's a then and then and now you might like. I'd do another one this year except we haven't seen our son at home due to the pandemic since last Christmas."

Mike replies: That's just really great.

Andrew Lamb: "Love those photos. At the end of the day, it's about photographing nearest and dearest. This stuff matters. By the way, I think you'll find it's now spelled Xiggy...."

Jeff: "Just pulled my copy of Klett’s Second View: The Rephotographic Survey Project, and hadn’t remembered that he signed it. I like when that happens. I also have a number of fun ‘then and now’ city-themed books. But my favorite book tracing changes over time is Nicholas Nixon’s well known work documenting the Brown sisters."

Mike replies: Here's a page with that, although not up to the latest.

Kenneth Tanaka: "Priceless. This is one of the jobs photography does better than any other medium. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing, Mike."

Douglas Chadwick: "Mark Klett is just amazing. It's one thing to find those tripod-holes, it takes me a long time to do it. But Mark Klett can be walking down the street and spot a Walker Evans over his shoulder. Maybe he had done a bunch of research beforehand but I doubt it. It sure impressed me in Morgantown, West Virginia, a number of years ago.

"Another person who can do that is Chris Rauschenberg (one of the three founders of Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon, and yes, son of...). I remember a phone call with him when he was telling me about finding and re-photographing a whole bunch of Atget scenes in Paris from memory—not intentionally, he just kept running across them. It later turned into a project, but to hear him talk it started out with just stumbling across them walking around the city, and without the reference books to back it up."

Comments

[R. Edelman]

Speaking of then and now, Howard Schatz has been following the subjects of some of his photographs since before they were born through today, more than 20 years!

[Albano]

Inmediately thought about this amazing project by argentinian photographer Irina Werning:
https://irinawerning.com/back-to-the-future/
There's a book available.
Regards,

[Peter Williams]

I really like that The Rephotographic Survey Project book too. The process and travel involved seem very appealling to me (just as much as the results).

[John]

The UK photographer Don McCullin, once suggested that a ten-year-old photograph is inevitably history. Though that necessitates it surviving ten years to be viewed. Captions attached, with dates, place, and individual names are also mightily useful.

However, a ten-year wait isn’t necessary to show the inevitability of time. Nicholas Nixon’s series, “The Brown Sisters” is both a wonderful and disconcerting examination of ageing. An annual photograph, starting in 1974 of his wife, BeBe, and her three sisters, always facing the camera in the same order. Another such formal study was made by Steve Pyke, of his son, from birth onwards.

In a somewhat similar vein, many years ago, when young, I became intrigued by the logo illustration on Cerebos salt. A running boy, a can of Cerebos in an extended hand, chasing a chicken while pouring salt on its tail, to emphasise its free flowing properties, even in the damp of the British Isles. In turn, the tiny can depicted in the boy’s hand showed another miniature version of himself and chicken, and so on ad infinitum.

Sometimes, my photography is a limited incarnation of the multiple Cerebos boy and chicken. After making a picture of someone, wherever possible I give them a print. For example, for ten years my wife and I made annual visits to her home city in China. Though a provincial capital, in Chinese terms it has developed slowly, allowing elements of an old village to survive as new buildings went up around it.

When first photographing at the market there, I was merely a strange “long nose”. The following year I took back prints, leading to new pictures of people with their year old photographs. The market clown, clowning while he presented his photograph of him clowning to the camera. The serious women, holding her photograph, while looking a little less stern. The bicycle repair guy, seated in the same spot still surrounded by bicycles, amused that nothing had changed. But it had. We were all a year older, despite the little time machines prints. Repeating the process on each subsequent return increased the mutual pleasures of these brief engagements.

[Walter Glover]

Does the sleeve indicate a Chamonix owner in the clan?

[KeithB]

I have never been able to figure out posting images here, but we have done a similar thing with my son. At Epcot in Walt Disney World in the Italian section, there is a donkey statue pulling a brightly painted cart.

Back in 2005 or so, son went up to the donkey and grabbed it by the bridle. I quickly snapped the image.

So every time we go back, I coax him to go up to the donkey so I can get another addition to the theme. The problem is that the donkey and cart keep moving, so we have to hunt them down.

[George Housley]

Is ziggy just a pup?
If so he is a littermate of Jasmine, just 7 years younger. The new neighbor down the street has an older grey muzzled version. (I just moved) Both ours are mutts from shelters 300 miles apart. Both are about 60 lbs (27kg). Both have fine hair, not coarse German Shepherd hair.
https://pbase.com/image/171119548/large
https://pbase.com/bopbop/image/171119550 (with granddaughter)
(pBase is my go to quick display photo aggregator.)

If Ziggy reaches about that weight, have Xander contact me and we can all apply to the AKC for a new dog breed designation.

[Daniel]

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”

― Will Rogers

The dogs are a good part of a full life. Good friends and at times good car guards when you are out and about.

[scott kirkpatrick]

Here's my "then and now" sequence. From 2001, just after we moved to Israel:

https://flic.kr/p/2jTU1ho

to 2018:

https://flic.kr/p/2bcmr5m .

[Those are great. Fine-looking young people Scott! --Mike]

[Arg]

Soon to be Xiggy

[Ron Hoffer]

In my new photo memoir "From the Bronx to Berlin and Beyond" documenting some of my international development work, I had the good fortune to capture an image of a Polish colleague with her baby Joasia swaddled in a project-themed T-shirt back in 1997, and another from 2016 with Joasia all grown up but with the same themed T-shirt. See the last two images in the sample gallery at:
https://ronhoffer.com/books
My favorite approach is still the amazing "Brown Sisters" series by Nicholas Nixon mentioned by John in an earlier comment.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

I believe the retrophotography project is somewhat simplified in places like Disney World by placing "Kodak Picture Point" stickers on the ground in selected locations :-).

Or maybe that was just 30 years ago and they stopped; I've never been there myself.