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Chace Bank, 2006 and Strand Theater, 1965. Springfield Rewind, Springfield, Illinois. [Mouse-over for "before" image.]

Repeat Photography

Read Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn before completing this assignment.

Repeat photography is "the practice of finding the site of a previous photography, reoccupying the original camera position, and making a new photograph of the same scene."

Bibliography of Repeat Photography for Evaluating Landscape Change (Rogers, et.el., 1984)

Assignment

• Read or persue reading.
• Select a place.
• Select at least two (2) historic or historical photographs of the place.
  • Cite sources of images.
  • Justify your selection
  • Explain why you think the photogrphs were taken and how the occasion and the photographer's approach effect the perception of the place.
  • Scan or "copy stand" images.
• Take at least one (1) contemporary photograph.
• Undertake a detailed analysis of the evolution of the place employing the images, only: not the place itself.
• Develop a matrix (loosely modeled after the Harris Matrix) to assess a selection of at least six (6) pertinent features and their evolution.
• Date
  • Provide their 'relative date' (see Harris, below), and
• Provide a more 'absolute' date based on style, technology, and other cultural and physical parameters.
• Reference historic or contemporanry literature to substantiate your analysis.
• Develop written analysis of the evolution of the place, backed by research, documented.
• Consider the implication behind the visual evidence to inform your analysis.
• Define the (changing) sense of place based on methodolodies developed by Grady Clay and others.
• Include details of selected portions of the images, as needed.
• Referenced at least five (5) peer-reviewed, scholarly publications.
• Consider the factors that affected change.
• Hand in:
  • Printed copy of the report with individual images on single page, with citation.
  • Digital copy of the report with all images, as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file.
  • Powerpoint for presentation.

Reading

• Brand, Stewart. How Buildings Learn: What happens after they're built. New York: Viking, 1994. Chapters 1 through 6. [View on Amazon.]
• Rephotography, Wikipedia
• Understand the basics of the Harris Matrix. Optional.
• Clay, Grady. Real Places: An Unconventional Guide to America's Generic Landscape. On Google Book.

Resources

• Rogers, Gary F., Harold E. Malde, and Raymond M. Turner. Bibliography of Repeat Photography for Evaluating Landscape Changes, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1984.
• Landscape Change Program, University of Vermont.
• Atlanta Time Machine, Gary Germani
• Rephoto, Springfield Rewind, Springfield, Illinois.
• Rephotographs, New York Changing (image gallery)
• Rocky Mountain Repeat Photography Project, School of Enviromental Studies, Victoria, British Columbia.
• Allen, Craig D., Julio L. Betancourt, and Thomas W. Swetnam. "Land Use History of North America - (LUHNA): Repeat Photography," The Impact of Climate Change and Land Use in the Southwestern United States, U.S. Global Change Research Program, U.S. Geological Survey, interactive workshop University of Arizona, September 3-5, 1997.
• A Sense of Green - A City's Changing Texture: An interpretive black & white repeat photography exhibit of the Baton Rouge urban forest. A project created by Jeannie Frey Rhodes. Louisiana Department of State Museums
• Santa Rita Experimental Range Repeat Photography, University of Arizona College of Agriculture
• The Great Fire of London (animation), Social History, Society and Culture, BBC
• Henriot, Christian, editor.Virtual Shanghai: Shanghai Urban Space in Time, Institut d'Asie Orientale (IAO) / Institut des Sciences de l'Homme (ISH).
• Fitzpatrick, Blake. Disaster Topographies, Gallery TPW

Additional Reading

• Webb, Robert H., Grand Canyon, a Century of Change : Rephotography of the 1889-1890 Stanton Expedition. Tempee: University of Arizona Press, 1996. View on Amazon.
• Stone, William. New Mexico: Then & Now. Englewood, Colorado: Westcliffe Publishers, n.d.