In a country where cities rise from rice paddies, to say that China has developed rapidly over the past century is something of understatement. Self-described “photography and creativity enthusiast” Dheera Venkatraman recently created a set of then-and-now photos to visually convey this development.
“I recently decided to travel not through space but in time,” wrote Venkatraman on his Petapixel page. “I searched for numerous photographs from the past 100 years in China, went to several of those cities and re-took exactly the same shots, from the same perspective and same focal length, to the greatest extent possible, creating create pairs of photos, perhaps resembling a 'spot the difference' game.”
“It wasn’t always easy to get that perfect angle match; in some places the vantage point ended up being in a private location, and in some cases there was a large obstruction or building preventing me from getting the same view. But nonetheless, I managed to capture several shocking contrasts over the past century of Chinese history,” added the photographer.
Check out the spectacular results below:
[Photos via Petapixel]
