Meshing Past and Present

[thesummerqueen]

This is, quite honestly, one half of the reason I love photography. The other half has to do with revealing worlds that many people don't stop to appreciate. This half is about the haunting ability to capture a time and place in a way you can't record in any other fashion.

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blog...war-france

As a historical consultant, Jo Teeuwisse finds photos from the past and learns about their context. As it says on her website, "For years we have been researching daily life before and during the Second World war, not just gathering information but also interviewing eye witnesses and recreating certain aspects of history to gain a unique insight into that era."

Back in 2010, we featured her incredible photos of present day Amsterdam merged with its past. When we interviewed her, we found out that she started the process of photoshopping two eras together back in 2007, when she discovered 300 old negatives at a flea market.

Throughout the past few years, Teeuwisse has continued to combine the past and the present, and recently, she put out more haunting photos that show soldiers at war in France. Disturbing as some of them might be, like the one above titled Left Behind, the images are meant to give us a deeper understanding of our history. As Teeuwisse once told us, "I knew what happened there, but knowing the exact spot of some detail will etch it into your visual memory."