The Past Present Project: Christian Carollo Retraces Family Photographs

Hold an old photograph in front of the place where it was taken, and two journeys briefly occupy the same view. A doorway lines up, a tree has grown and the people in the print remain in their own moment. Christian Carollo’s Past Present Project makes that meeting of times the heart of a travel series.

The project began in 2012 after Carollo found photographs from his grandfather’s travels. The early collection revisited places around the United States, using the old images as a starting point for new journeys and new photographs.

A family journey continued through photographs

This is more than a puzzle about finding an exact camera position. The earlier picture tells Carollo that somebody close to him once stood there and thought the view worth keeping. Returning becomes a way of paying attention to that person’s experience.

The 2015 project coverage describes the initial connection with a photograph from Winchester Bay, Oregon. The later comparisons show how a small family discovery can become a sustained creative idea.

Stable features and visible changes

In the paired scenes, buildings provide useful anchors. A window or roofline may remain recognisable while signs, vehicles and planting change. The viewer can notice both continuity and difference without being told that a place has stood still.

Matching a photograph also involves camera position and framing. A slight change in height or lens can make a street look wider or a building seem farther away. That does not invalidate the comparison; it simply means the images are a thoughtful recreation rather than a precise survey.

Revisit one identifiable family photograph

Choose one photograph with a location you can identify and a subject that is still accessible from public space. Ask relatives what they remember about it before setting out. A date, a shop name or the reason for the visit may be as valuable as the picture itself.

Take a copy rather than a fragile original. Look for a stable feature to line up, then move only within places you are allowed to stand. If the original position is now private, blocked or unsafe, make a nearby view and explain the difference.

Record your own visit as well as the match

Record when you made the recreation and what you know about the older image. If its date is uncertain, say so. Avoid removing all evidence of change just to make the pair look more similar; the changed details are often what make it interesting.

Keep a wider photograph too, without the old print in the foreground. That gives future family members a clearer record of your own visit and may help someone repeat the exercise again.

For another approach to earlier and later views, see our Manhattan photo comparison. For a diary built from the present moment, try five-second travel clips. Carollo’s project offers a particularly warm reason to revisit a place: sometimes the next journey begins in a box of photographs at home.

Trees, streets and the years between images

The garden, street and waterfront comparisons give the project several ways to show time. A tree’s growth may dominate one pair, while a sign or vehicle supplies the most obvious difference in another. The photograph held in the foreground also makes Carollo’s present visit visible as an action: someone has returned, found a viewpoint and brought the earlier image back into the place it records.

The collection ranges from New Orleans and Natchez to South Dakota, San Francisco, Yosemite, Colorado, Virginia and Pennsylvania. That geographical spread reflects a family’s earlier journeys as well as Carollo’s own. If you try a smaller version, keep the information you learn even when an exact match proves impossible. A demolished building, a changed road or a relative’s uncertain memory can still belong in the record. The purpose is to connect two visits honestly, not to erase the intervening years until the pictures appear identical. A note explaining the difference may eventually matter as much as the new photograph.