Rephotography

     When I was at the Midwest Archives Conference (MAC) a couple months ago, I learned about a photo technique that Luther College Library has used to engage with students and alumni. This technique is called Rephotography. It is where you take an old picture and you restage it in present day. They are multiple different ways you can do it. You can combine both pictures into one picture. You can also have a major or traumatic event of the past and mix it with the new. I saw a few do this for D-Day.  What we choose to do was recreate old institution pictures of the MBTS community and restage it in the same place with modern members of the community.

Here are some examples of rephotography that I have done over the past few months.

This was my first attempt so it was a little rough. At the top you have a picture taken of Dr. Leavel Seats teaching the last day of a missions class from 1989. The bottom is Dr. Hadaway teaching the last day of missions class from 2014. You can notice how much has changed. We went from desks to tables. Black boards to white boards. The newer classroom has fewer maps. These pictures also give an idea about how fashion has changed. Because of the spacing of desks and tables, this was the hardest one to recreate.

 

 I was much more satisfied how this picture came out. This is a picture of someone talking to the librarian, while another student waits at the desk. There are a lot of differences that can be seen here. The top is from 1987 and the bottom picture is from 2014. The librarian is older picture is a young white woman. In the newer picture, we have a young African woman at the desk. The student walking in the Library is Korean instead of white. The person waiting at the desk is a young woman instead of an older man. Each picture accurately represents the demographics of students at each time.  We have a much more ethnically diverse student population then we did in 1987. Also we have younger students because of our Fusion and Undergraduate programs.

Both of these pictures were taken in the periodical section of the Library. The top picture is from 1989 and the bottom picture 2014. This one had the best staging of the ones that I have done so far. Notice that we have similar stacking of books and notebooks. Also, the satchel and computer bag are in the same place. This also shows how more racially diverse and younger are students have become over the years.

These picture got a lot attention on Facebook. We got several hundred views along with dozens of likes and comments. This resonated with a lot of current students and alumni. Overall, I was really satisfied how the rephotograpy turned out and hope to do more in the future.