thenandnow

We told you to expect a wave of interesting "then and now" series when Google first integrated the 'time-machine' feature into Street View, and that prophesy is starting to come true.

A couple of weeks ago we showed you GooBing Detroit, a Tumblog that tracked the demise of Detroit in Street View images. And today, Gizmodo published a fascinating look at the rapid pace of gentrification that has transformed several areas of Brooklyn.

August 19th, 1944 was the beginning of The Liberation of Paris, the six-day battle between the Parisian-led French Resistance and German forces. Occupied and governed by Nazi Germany since June of 1940, it was on this day that the Parisians decided to strike back against the German garrison.

Each of the transitions above capture 100 years of change. The effects of two World Wars that left some …

We’ve shared his work before here on PetaPixel, but this time filmmaker Simon Smith has stepped up his game.

Whereas his previous collaboration compared 1920s footage of London to footage he captured present day side-by-side, his newest then-and-now piece overlays the two, creating a throwback to the London of 1924 by placing the scenes inside of modern-day London.

Get ready for a whole slew of "Then and Now" photo series featuring Street View images, because Google just turned the entire service into a convenient time machine.

In a city like New York, buildings and their façades can change seemingly overnight. So, what happens to the face of "the city that never sleeps" over the course of a decade? If we take the work of James and Karla Murray as an example, the answer is: a lot.

The National Parks Services and Gigapan recently put together a photography project that takes a comparative look at two of America's best-known pieces of land and how they've changed over the course of 80 years.

A couple of times last year, we had the chance to share with you amazing color film footage shot all the way back in the 1920s by filmmaker and cinematographer Claude Friese-Greene. His father had invented the bicolour technique of capturing color film, and using this technique Friese-Greene captured beautiful footage of 1920's Britain for his collection of films The Open Road.

The most famous of these films were shot in London, at the end of Friese-Greene's two-year roadtrip around Britain; and now, 86 years later, we can compare his footage with the same shots taken in present day thanks to filmmaker Simon Smith.

It turns out the rich, famous and powerful of today bear a striking resemblance to the rich, famous and powerful of yesteryear -- at least if you trust the photo series Iconatomy by George Chamoun and the followup series Then & Now by Marc Ghali.

Romanian bothers Toma and Paul Alexandru were trying to think of a creative surprise for their mother Simona's 55th birthday when it dawned on them that she might enjoy seeing her favorite photos of the pair... shall we say... updated.

So, 20 years later, they set out to all the old holiday locations to re-shoot all of their mom's favorite photos again, leading to a surprise that was equal parts funny and touching.

In 2008, Hurricane Ike ripped through Texas leaving massive flooding and what turned out to be about $19.3 billion in damage. In Houston, the task of documenting the aftermath for the Houston Press fell to photographer Daniel Kramer.

And earlier this month, on the hurricane's 5-year anniversary, Kramer set out again to revisit the once-devastated locations he photographed in 2008 and put together a series of before-and-after shots to show how well the city has bounced back.

Then-and-now photos are always fascinating to see. Historical scenes come to life when blended into or placed side-by-side with modern-day photographs of cities we all know very well. Be it Paris, New York or San Francisco, most of the best-known cities have gotten the then-and-now treatment to great effect by many a photographer.

The most recent Then and Now series we've run across, however, isn't just meant to show how the scenery has changed. When photographer and historian Marc A. Hermann created the images, he purposely used only vintage (Note: and sometimes gruesome) crime scene photos to fill in the "then" part.

NYC Grid is a website run by Paul Sahner that explores and documents New York neighborhoods, "street by street and block by block." One of the awesome reoccurring features on the blog is the before-and-after section, which features pairs of photos showing identical locations but shot decades -- or sometimes over a century -- apart.

Do you always laugh and squirm when you look back at official school pictures from "awkward years"? You're not alone -- take a peek at the Awkward Years Project and you'll see what we mean. The project was started by a Utah-based graphic designer and photography enthusiast named Merilee, who's collecting then-and-now portraits to show people who have blossomed since their awkward teen days.

In 2010, photographer Seth Taras created a series of photographs for a worldwide marketing campaign for the History Channel with the message "Know Where You Stand." The photographer shot photos at locations around the world where major historical events happened, and then blended old photos showing those events from the same perspective. It's the same "then and now" concept that has become quite popular over the past few years.

To "raise awareness of the social and economic challenges the city of Detroit," website Detroiturbex explores and photographs abandoned buildings and places in and around the city. One of its recent projects focuses on Lewis Cass Technical High School, which had its building devastated by a major fire in 2007 (the building was subsequently demolished).

Dutch historian Jo Teeuwisse is back with another fascinating then-and-now project (we featured her work once back in 2010), this time titled Ghosts of War--France. The images show old World War II photographs of soldiers blended seamlessly into photos of the same locations in modern day France.

Two years ago, San Francisco-based photographer Shawn Clover began to create an amazing series of images, titled 1906 + 2010: The Earthquake Blend, featuring photographs captured during the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake blended into views of what the city currently looks like.

Wanting to see how she and her siblings have changed over the years, Helsinki-based photographer Wilma Hurskainen decided to gather her three sisters together and recreate photographs of the four of them taken by their father decades ago.

After collecting old World War 2 photographs taken in major European cities, Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov spent a year traveling around Europe to re-photograph the same scenes as they look today. He then carefully combined the old images with the new ones to create photographs that show two views of the same location captured over 60 years apart.