The ghosts of the past..

I spent a lot of my time daydreaming about how places looked in the past.  I'm pretty obsessed by it.  I find old pictures fascinating, especially when the scene they depict hasn't changed much.  It's almost as if the ghosts of the past are near enough to touch.

I've seen a few people superimpose images of the past over modern day images and they've really captured my imagination, so I thought i'd have a go at it.  Today I borrowed an amazing book from the library - 'The Great War: A Photographic Narrative'. It's a fascinating collection of images, some very familiar, some i've never seen before.  I heartily recommend having a leaf through it.

Anyway, included in the book was the image below, from the Imperial War Museum archives.



The picture was taken in September 1914 on Agar Street, at the site of the Charing Cross Hospital in London (now a police station). It shows some of the first wounded being brought back from early clashes of the First World War. It's an interesting image - particularly the policemen holding back the crowds.  Obviously this sight was something of a novelty at that stage of the war - depressingly less so later on.

I had a look on Google Streetview and tried to locate the same point today. Here it is:

I don't have Photoshop, but with a little bit of tweaking on Powerpoint i've managed to produce the following image:

It's not perfect, but hopefully good enough to create that sense of the past lapsing into the present that I find so fascinating.  Almost 100 years ago now..