Cities of Ghosts
Whenever I walk around a city I can’t help but imagine what it was like at some point in the past. Owning partially to my love of history and just generally romanticizing the past, engaging in nostalgia I never experienced, I think of the people who once inhabited the space I’m currently traversing.
When I lived in Amsterdam I imagined what Nieuwmarkt must have been like when it was a detention center for Jewish people during World War Two. In New York I tried to imagine when South Street Seaport was bustling with longshoremen and not just tourists. Now, in New Orleans, a city where we don’t even bury our dead, I am constantly imagining turn-of-the-century juke joints and Reconstruction-era block parties. The thing with New Orleans is you don’t have to dig too deep to feel like the imagination is transposed onto everyday reality.
These photos by Dutch artist Jo Teeuweisse get right at the heart of all these complicated feelings of the glory of the everydayness of the past. While some of his photos are truly celebratory, especially the ones involving the Liberation, others are just of regular folks smiling for the camera.
Check out his Flickr set for more.
(Via How to be a Retronaut)
