If you're feeling inspired to try this yourself, go to your local historical society/museum and ask to go through some of their albums. My town has volumes of old photos like this from 20-50 years ago with easily recognizable standing structures.
Might try this with my father's collection of photos from east Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. It'd be interesting to compare the Marxist state to the current one. Good excuse for a holiday as well :)
Thanks to the poster for this: it's a great idea and the photographs are wonderful.
As others have said, this is a powerful reminder of how close these historic moments are to our current time. We're still human, and we make the same sort of mistakes today. Mistakes that, alone, seem harmless enough, but when combined, lead us back into hell. Let's be vigilant and remember the price paid by those before us! (Full disclaimer: I watched Sarah's Key last night, so I'm a bit fired-up)
This would make an awesome augmented reality app for your phone. It could alert you when you're near somewhere it had a historic photo for, and then direct you to point your camera in the right location and overlay the old photo on to your current view of the street.
This is really great to give a sense on how WW2 was close to our current world. Sometimes when you learn about the war in History books it all seems distant and far but it was actually very, very close to us in time.
> maybe you’ve walked down one of those streets yourself!
Damn yes I walked down those Cherbourg streets. Day for day, nine years ago I met a girl in a MMORPG, and two weeks later I actually crossed France on a bluff to physically meet my wife there.
This makes those composited shots quite a bit more emotional.
