When I came across a book titled Norwich Old and New in a second-hand bookshop in Wells I had an idea…
Published in 1974 it documents how Norwich looked in 1970s compared with the late 1800s/ early 1900s. They tried their best to take photos from the same vantage points as the originals.
In 2022 I started the challenge of photographing the same scenes to see how much has changed in the almost 50 years since the book was published.
I have no idea where I stand with regards to copyright. I have no idea how I would even go about tracking down the original authors of the book so for now I will just use the historical images until I’m told otherwise. I will credit to the authors and photographers of the historical images.
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Author’s Note and Introduction from the 1974 book.
When Andrew Cluer and I wrote ‘Former Norwich’ (Archive) in 1972 it subsequently brought to light a great deal of material from sources previously unknown. Some photographs were better than those we had obtained and some were completely new scenes of places for which we were unable to obtain material previously.
Therefore, when EP asked me to write this book it was a marvelous opportunity to put this material to good use and an incentive to collect more.
I have plundered the life-time’s work of George Swain yet again and to him I owe a debt of gratitude and would like to pay tribute to someone who is genuinely unselfish in allowing me to use what amounts to years of searching, delving and hard work.
I have spurned the superb collections in Norwich City Library and concentrated on new material. Some of this is drawn from the wealth of postcards on Norwich. These came into vogue with the lifting of postal regulations forbidding writing on the same side as the address in the first few years of the twentieth century. Many were individually printed photographs issued by local photographers such as J. P. Stanley of Earlham. Photographic paper could be bought with the normal printed instructions for postcards on the back.
Firms such as Valentines, Boots, Frith and Jarrolds issued national series of which three or four would be of Norwich. These were very often printed abroad by a stone lithographic process perfected in Germany from original work by Fox Talbot.
The contemporary photographs were taken by my good friend Cliff Middleton, who climbed down river banks, hung from third storey windows and for one photograph even stood on my shoulders with the camera held above his head to try and gain the height of the early photograph because the building from which it had been taken no longer existed. We have taken every care to create exactly the same vantage point as the original, but we hope readers will understand that sometimes this was just not possible.
The date-line for this book is about 1900. I feel it is important to keep more or less to one period as it allows a more general impression to build up. Most of the photographs are just about within living memory and will I hope bring pleasant memories to those who view them.
2022 – Starting out..
After a couple of successful photo comparisons I decided it would be more interesting to try to blend the old and new photos. This makes it a lot more difficult as the old and new photos need to line up pretty much perfectly.
I have put the photos in the order they are in the book not he order I took them in
Pointing and shooting in the the approximate position was no longer an option.
It is impossible to get the photos lined up perfectly regardless how you go about it. For starters there is no information as to what camera and lens were used to take the photos.
I could not get any photo even remotely close to lining up using my iphone. All the photos have been taken using my Panasonic Lumix GX80 with a 12-60 lens.
I thought if I used the grid on the camera screen it would help to line parts of the image up. My camera has a couple of choices but went for the 16 section grid.
I added the same grid to the historical photos in photoshop then printed them out.
This helped a lot. I found that I could add a cross to the camera screen in conjunction with the grid. I printed the old photos with an additional cross.
The cross and grid have made it far easier to work out the approximate place the photographer from the historical photos was standing and line the images up.
It is still very difficult and I have been to the same places multiple times, failing to line the images up.
