How much have old/modern photographs been used as a geographic
resource. I have seen isolated examples, but there is a lot of
material in old geography books and old guide books which if compared
to their more modern counterparts, gives a fascinating record of
change for both physical and human geographers. Most old, and modern,
books focus on a rather limited range of sites to photograph, eg, in
Dorset, Durdle Door, Old harry Rock, Lulworth Cove; in London,
Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls, the Docklands, etc...
This means that with sufficient search the identical site will have
been photographed from the same vantage point (again, many sites have
a limited number of good vantage points), and photos going back as
far as ca. 1910 can be compared with those of the 1980s and 90s.
Coastal "honeypots" for example, show considerable erosion of the
vegetation due to increased no. of visitors. St Pauls has not changed
much, but photos generally also show the surrounding area which has,
especially with pre WW2 pictures.
This is only "microchange", if one can draw an analogy with
micro/macro economics, but there is a wealth of detail in here,
something for geographers of all disciplines. And (unless the
airbrushers have been at work) the material should be free of "mapping
errors". The cheif problem is actually dating the image - many
textbooks published in eg 1980 will use photos of a decade or more
earlier, as discovered when the same image turns up in a 1970
publication. But has anyone else tried this method?
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