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I'm a sucker for these kinds of photo comparison essays .. always great to see, and as a recent implant to Europe its been a decade now of looking at people's o
by fit2rule 11y ago
I'm a sucker for these kinds of photo comparison essays .. always great to see, and as a recent implant to Europe its been a decade now of looking at people's old pictures, before/during WW2, and comparing to how it is now in the modern age .. and I'm always struck by how modern things seemed to have looked in 1930's/40's ..
The first two pictures in this article for example include buildings which to my modern eye look out of place "in the early part of the last century", as they are 'too modern'.
But then I wander around these places now and see these buildings in their physical form, and I'm filled with even more wonder that they survived so long and still have a feeling of modernity to them. I wonder where this bubble came from and how it came to be that I cannot see the modern world for the centuries-long process it is, and only feel connected with 'modernity' formed in the recent decade or so. I think this is something that changes as one gets older and starts to care about these things - never in my youth would I have been concerned with the trivial meanderings of comparison with the then and now.
- tormeh 11y agoCapital-intensive things which age well, like buildings, are very stale in a way that is shocking when you are used to thinking about nearly anything else, but especially electronics. It was a startling realization for me as well.
- johnchristopher 11y agoI think the era we are born into define us way more than we'd like to admit and it includes our feeling of being at home in the architectural environment we grew up into. There is something along that line in Rice's vampire chronicles where she states vampires tend to prefer and retain the taste for what was considered beautiful or worthwhile when they were humane.