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Artist Photoshops Scenes From WWII Into Present Day
Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov has taken old World War II photos and photoshopped them over the locations in present day. The scenes from places like Prague, Vienna, and Moscow are incredibly well done and a neat way to appreciate history.
It's a great way to remember past events by envisioning them through today's eye. Very cool.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
This is probably the most interesting use of photoshoping I've seen yet. By seeing the conditions of the streets and buildings merged straight into modern times, you really get a sense of how war-torn the world was at the time.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
The first one (on the stairs) was the best.
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These are also pretty good:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31199746@N02/sets/72157622452249309/
In Soviet Russia, history Photoshops you?
I had to. This is likely the only time that tired "in soviet russia" joke is topical.
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That's an intriguing way to put these old pictures into context (or to give historic meaning to present-day buildings). Even more interesting is the effect of historic pictures in color: Somehow the grayscale pictures create a distance that isn't really there. The Empire That Was Russia is a collection of color pictures from Russia during the first decade of the 20th century. They were taken as sequences of individual exposures with color filters.
Those are simply awesome!
The sad thing is, if you're under the age of 30, the vast majority of Americans can't relate to WWII in the least. You ask the average American on the street and they don't know the difference between WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, or the Gulf War.
Plus, even young aviation enthusiasts tend to have a low regard and no interest for any aircraft which isn't jet powered. Meaning, another area of interest which now has a complete disconnection from WWI and WWII history.
The best part about this is the fact that they had to recreate the exact angle of the original photos. Great Job!
whats a photshop?
portfolio
They didn't do a great job blending the new and old together. I guess that was their artistic choice, but I don't like it.
There's always someone saying things should or shouldn't be in idle but surely this is one of the cases where it shouldn't be?
There's been nothing but positive reviews of this guy's work here so far (and one Soviet Russia joke)
You've cut off all their feet!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IRX2WTWvlQ
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The point was to look at place years after they had been destroyed and to contrast the iece of history with now. NOT to make it seem like it's happening right now.
Seriously, get with it.
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SA goons do this all the time.
Gets really quite eerie when the pictures are displayed in a software capable of switching to greyscale. Not "better" of course, the contrast was surely also the point...but interesting, more blended.
Though it does make the photos more distant, I guess - doesn't help with how, while being a small kid, I thought for some time that the world had to be so sad place in the past, without colors ;) (I apparently missed the existence of color paintings/etc.; and, in retrospect, wasn't very wrong; in some twisted way...)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Interesting start, but methinks has a ways to go. As others note, it's mostly just rough masking one photo onto another.
Methinks the effect would be more striking if the foreground characters were crisply masked onto the background photo, with a broader blending of striking background distinctions (rubble). Don't just have a soldier fade into the modern setting.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Spoken like someone who has never created a work of art. There is more value there than the technical expertise require to create it, just like there is more value to a painting than the technical expertise of the paint strokes.
Content is everything.
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I'm sorry, I think it's stupid
First off, I think images are very interesting and I congratulate the artist who made them. Finding the right locations, and getting the camera angles correct was no doubt a challenge. The idea itself is brilliant.
However, I agree with the GP that the photo-shopping/blending aspect looks somehow amateurish, and breaks me out of what would otherwise be a very sublime experience I think. The problem is that the fading between the two photos seems haphazard. I understand that the point of the photos is to show the contrast between the two time periods. As such, you want it to be clear that there are two photos being overlaid. However it just looks weird to have, for example, people be half-erased. The artist could have instead defined a blending edge that didn't cut across any people (or cars, etc.) so that each sub-region of the image looked fully-formed and thus more real. I think this would have made the effect more powerful. Two realities/time-periods side-by-side, rather than two photos one on top of the other.
Of course, I can fully appreciate that art is ultimately a very subjective thing. So the artist may indeed have had good reasons for doing it the way he has. My own personal impressions are just that: my own.
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end troll
He's done quite a few: http://sergey-larenkov.livejournal.com/
I recognise a few of the places in the photos, and would really like to know where the others are. If there isn't a page identifying them somewhere, shall we make a list here?
I'll start: sergeylarenkov12.jpg shows Soviet soldiers in front of the Reichstag building, Berlin.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Never thought that possible. And about 'war? What chicks ever been to war, not counting Faker Jessica?
Finally a good idle post...
The photographer's photoshop skills are not much better than the average PS user but I think where these doctored photographs would resonate most is with people wo actually know the places in the pictures. I do not know them so they have little meaning for me.
And come on, it is not like WWII is ancient history. It is just one average lifetime ago.
Shamefully there is still war being waged lots of places in the world at any given time. I think pictures from current conflicts would have a lot more impact and would not require doctoring!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Here is a digital reconstruction of the city of ruins in 1945: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXD51CY8DkA Google Earth historical imagery also has aerial photos of Warsaw from '30s, 1945 and present.
Thanks for the link. It's a shame the original link didn't have it. Good stuff. This one in particular gave me some chills: http://pics.livejournal.com/sergey_larenkov/pic/000029eg/
It's a great idea, but the execution is absolutely awful. The guy clearly spent time getting the angle of the contemporary photos right, but was completely sloppy with his production work. It looks like he got lazy, or he's not particularly good with Photoshop. Instead of just going with messy fades, he should have cropped the imposed images with more precision, so that it looked like those old scenes were more integrated as opposed to being merely superimposed. It would have been more striking and would have given these compositions are more otherworldly feel. Although, my personal preference would have been to shoot the new scenes in black and white and then composed the two together so that they blended more seamlessly, like the two time periods had become one.
Obviously faked. You can see these are two different pictures! Come back when you learn Photoshop.
Nah, the medium is the message, the content is the audience.
I argue that "snobbery" is only true when the favored condition actually has some merit of some kind.
The condition described here is more like the kind of cognitive dissonance described in (I think it was) Escher, Goedel, Bach, where the robot insists that one recording of a symphony is more pleasing than another, because of the aesthetic qualitites of the patterns of the grooves in the vinyl discs.
So is the robot a snob, or, deaf to the actual auditory content and unfit to judge by normal human standards?
There are all kinds of people who have nothing to be snobby about, yet act supercilious all the same.
Say it right: "Nuc-le-ah Powah".
I think this is quite easily the best thing I've ever seen on idle. Thanks!
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Exactly. When I saw these photos a few days ago, I immediately recognized the lack of technical skill... however, I was still moved to tears (yeah, I'm a girl, get over it) and several other emotions. These images are simple yet powerfully evocative and completely fantastic as is. The sense of seeing ghosts, or better yet, viewing a memory through someone else's senses is amazing.
Despite the lack of technical skill, the artist achieved the goal of having me feel that I was standing in another's shoes. And the fact is, he got better at it with practice. With some work (and a good drawing tablet), he could easily learn to rework these photos to eliminate the technical rawness that distracts the eye and impedes the viewer's immersion in the work and its meaning. I won't hold my breath - I'm more than satisfied with what he has chosen to share with us.
I lived near "A bridge to far" and in some movies, that is very eary. You realize your house is one of the landing fields. But then, I used to often go past a spot in the woods were if you went of the bicycle path a little bit, down, there was a small monument were people were killed by the germans.
If a german asks the way, I point them in the wrong direction. It is how I was raised. I might be silly after so many decades, but it is better then forgetting.
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You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It should be worth noting that the "photoshopping" means using Adobe Photoshop. Retouching is the word for a general process of photo modification regardless of the software used. In short, every time someone says "photoshopped", they are advertising Adobe Photoshop for no compensation. :)
War happened, in Europe, and people who lived through it are still alive and a part of the mass consciousness. One of the reasons Europeans are less turned on by war than US-anians.
The problem is that the fading between the two photos seems haphazard. I understand that the point of the photos is to show the contrast between the two time periods. As such, you want it to be clear that there are two photos being overlaid. However it just looks weird to have, for example, people be half-erased. The artist could have instead defined a blending edge that didn't cut across any people (or cars, etc.) so that each sub-region of the image looked fully-formed and thus more real. I think this would have made the effect more powerful.
Exactly!
Almost any one of those "then and now" photos where people hold up an old photo of a location while taking a photo of it now beat this collection in every aspect possible.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinflower/3611307186/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/uwgbadmissions/3947916581/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/uwgbadmissions/3768986885/in/set-72157621758292209/
Those have both an artistic AND journalistic feel to them.
The fact that you see the hand holding the photo actually connects you the viewer (cause it is seen from your perspective - as if it is your own hand), the person taking the photo (cause he/she is right there in the photo) and the location in both past and present.
The way those photos in the article are done now the final result just seems lazy.
Slap two photos of the same location one on top of the other, and then run around the edges with an eraser tool. Ta-DAH!
No skill, no art - just a gimmick that was old back in the '90s.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Somebody from the eastern USA needs to trek out to the Civil War battlefields and try this. All the Mathew Brady photos are in the public domain.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Well, I agree as well. I first went to go look at the photos, then came to the comments because I was certain I couldn't be the only one who didn't think they were so very well done. Great concept, could use some more time cooking in photoshop.
Despite the lack of technical skill, the artist achieved the goal of having me feel that I was standing in another's shoes.
I am guessing here, but I am quite certain that you were actually moved by the original art and authenticity of the old photos he picked for their "power".
Kinda like how an old song sung by an "American Idol" star doesn't get better - it was good to begin with. At best, it will be "OK". At worst... well...
And it works the same way for "professionals" too.
And no amount of hardware can make an artist out of a hack. Particularly not a tablet in this case.
To fix those, one would need to use some actual elbow grease PLUS something the "artist" clearly lacks - the eye of a photographer.
Cause those photos he used are not photographs. Those are snapshots.
Not a single impressive point in any of them. They are completely expressionless and "dead".
Why? Cause he was taking photos of dead things - buildings. Whoever was taking those old photos was taking photos of living people.
Living people doing "important things". Meaningful things. Things worth being preserved for posterity.
In the new photos people are there simply by accident. Utterly meaningless and completely unmotivated.
Those photos don't contrast - they clash.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Spoken like someone who has never passed through the same street as someone who created a work of art. Even a bad work of art.
Technique is (in most cases) not art in itself, but it is what is necessary to create a rhythm and a beat from what is simply "banging on the drums".
That is why there are such things as art academies and art teachers that teach art lessons in such establishments. 90% perspiration and all that.
Very, very, very, VERY few people are natural talents born with both skill and (for the lack of the better word) soul for creating that elusive combination of conditions in their work we like to refer to as "art".
Others can be taught to harness what they already have, or to improve it or even to fake that they have it.
And in the long run, even those that fake it might stumble into making "art".
The "artist" that created those new photos has no technique nor sense of art - all he has is technology.
And he shows that he can't even use that properly.
Oh and...
If content is EVERYTHING as you say - where is the content in the new photos?
Old ones have it. New ones on the other hand...
They are so utterly devoid of any content or purpose that he could have just as well used the default Windows backgrounds to create those... Photoshop disasters.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Do not visit this page as if its Photoshop Friday on SomethingAwful, or Worth1000. You will have a sense of disappointed.
I believe the artist has approached this to provide an interpreted contrast between what a 15 year old sees today in his town, and what happened in that exact spot some 70 years ago.
This means there is no seamless transitions. But a conceptual overlay.
The images are striking for their impact.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
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There are some old photographs of my town in an ice cream parlor down the street. I wonder if they'd let me borrow and scan them. I'd love to take a shot at this, though it wouldn't have the same emotional impact.
Could be effective to get people over the "It could never happen here / now" mentality.
Nice work..!!
Interesting idea, very bad execution. Sure, next to a geek armed with Gimp they seem good, but this should not be the comparing standard.
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"If a german asks the way, I point them in the wrong direction. It is how I was raised. I might be silly after so many decades, but it is better then forgetting."
You are so utterly wrong to do this. You cannot put the blame on people generations younger than those who commited the crimes. Even at the time, it wasn't even all Germans who committed crimes, and suggesting that is just plain wrong.
My grandad was in the British SAS and my Nana in the army in WWII and im damn proud of that, and the fact that my British ancesters stood up to Hitler when very few others did. I was also raised to mock the Germans, which is understandable having grandparents who were in the war and obviosly biased against Germans, but I have a brain, and I use it to make my own judgements as I go through life, and that mocking period ended when I reached teenage years. I would never consider treating present day Germans as if they had comitted the crimes! Or even painting all early 40's era Germans with the same brush (look at Schindler). We are all descended from bloody Africa anyway, and national bouderies, in the sense of using them to dictate whether a nation is "good" or "bad" is ridiculous. Having myself emmigrated to a non-English speaking country later in life, I can attest firsthand to the fact that underneath our 'national identities' we are generally all the same.
It's true that we should never forget what happened so that it never gets repeated, and that we should always be on our guard for leaders of nations who want to wage war or surpress ethnic groups, but you don't have to "remember" by treating people with disrespect.
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