An intersting book i have at home is a series of photos of Palestine taken
by the German air force (yes air force) around 1917. these were discovered
again about ten years ago and a photos from exactly the same point taken
and then compared. the book has about fifty of these comparisons.
apart from anything else these are very important political-historical
documents. they allow us to see what really was here prior to the process
of settlement and immigration which took place as part of Zionism state
formation. the answers my not always be comfortable to many Israelis, but
they provide important views of landscapes which were once eher and have
since disappeared under those of the modern state.
david newman
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Professor David Newman, Phone: 972-7-6472016 (office)
Department of Geography 972-7-6518540 (home)
Department of Politics & Government,
Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Fax: 972-7-6472821 (office)
POB 653, Beer Sheva, Israel, 84105. 972-7-6512175 (home)
email: [log in to unmask] http://www.bgu.ac.il/geog/fac/newman
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On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Hillary Shaw wrote:
> 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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