Dublin, 50 years apart

Paulw

Well, I finally completed my summer project.

I must say a massive thanks to the Office of Archives, Indiana University, for their kind permission to use the original images on my website.

It was a tough task. Replicate (in some way) images of Dublin taken 50 years ago. It wasn't easy - trees have grown, roads have changed a bit, buildings have been replaces, and ... in many cases, the images were taken from the middle of a road. Dangerous for me to replicate. Also, the perspective of the camera/lenses have changed over time.

Anyway - have a look at my page, and feel free to leave me some comments.

http://www.photography.paul-walsh.net/landscape/Cushman/

Thanks folks.

Persiancowboy

Brilliant...well done on a great job. I love the old buses...a real bit of character about them. One good thing about modern Dublin is the amount of mature trees in the various city centre locations...

JD81

Thanks for sharing, really interesting and a great idea, have to say is it me or do some parts of Dublin look better in th 60's, i.e the areas around o'Connell street:eek:

mmalaka

well done
Thanks for sharing

samhail

Great work ! need to shoot it out to my dad and see what he has to say about it.

Must see if i can dig up any old photos that he took and see if i can do the same

AnimalRights

The colours on the old pics look so good, the greens in modern look to garish by comparison.

So many trees as u pointed out....

It'd also be nice to see somewhere outside the city centre too...

Jesus Wept

Liffey water level has dropped a lot. Grafton street looks dire nowadays.

Paulw

I found a number of things very interesting.

Firstly, the trees, especially around Christchurch. They have grown and now almost block views of the building. A shame in some ways, but nice to have big trees in the city.

I like the way that most of the buildings are the same. The overall architecture hasn't changed, but the usage and internals and paint. But, some major areas where buildings were replaced with "modern buildings", such as Dame St and George's St.

It was interesting to see the number of bikes on the streets in the 60s. I guess cars were still a luxury then, and bikes were the common way to get around.

I've already considered looking at doing similar again, on different areas. I thought about Dun Laoghaire, although the majority of the town has changed so much, destroyed in many ways. But, maybe this will inspire others to find old picts of their area and take images now. It's a historic comparison of urban change.

hbr

Great pictures Paul.

Paulw wrote: »

I've already considered looking at doing similar again....

Maybe you could go back further in time for the next set.
The NLI have put a lot of old images on flickr. As they
are published under a Creative Commons type of licence,
you would be free to use them in your then-&-now images.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nlireland/

How about a set from 100 years ago?

Borderfox

Excellent Paul, I had seen these pictures a while ago and wondered where some of them where.

magicbastarder

The-Rigger wrote: »

Liffey water level has dropped a lot.

psst: that's probably just the tide being out

leche solara

Great set Paul. You beat me to it. I had printed out the full set and intended to go out and replicate as many as I could. I notice the Long Hall pub in Georges St had another level back then, and I also notice you didn't attempt the ones taken from a bedroom window in the Shelbourne!

Excellent job, well done.

Fionn

excellent Paul

just one little thing! - why didn't you match the time on the clock in the last one

CdeP

Nice one, Paul. Very interesting.

Some of the shots make for quite depressing viewing, though.

sNarah

Amazing how many similarities there still are though!

I like what you've done with image "
Dame Street corner with George's Street" with also including cyclists into the picture, very clever.



Nice project Paul and well executed.

Paulw

sNarah wrote: »

I like what you've done with image "
Dame Street corner with George's Street" with also including cyclists into the picture, very clever.

I tried to get buses and bikes in to the images. Sometimes it took a little time to wait for a bike or bus to come along.

It was interesting as to how many buildings are still the same, thankfully.

pullandbang

Brilliant stuff Paul. Well done.

Awful_Bliss

Fantastic Paul. You got your updated pics inch perfect to the original. Nice to see some parts of Dublin haven't changed at all.

Paulw

There's one or two I'm not totally happy with. I got the angles all wrong. But, those I can go back and do again.

I must say, since putting the page up, I'm getting a lot of interest about it, especially from the US. I guess the Cushman images are quite well known in some areas. Plenty of hits from Indiana University.

Overall, it was an interesting project.

I'm going to look for similar types of street/architectural images, and may try to recreate them too. I know some parts of Dublin have changed so much you'd barely recognise anything from 20 years ago, never mind further back. And, there are also areas of Dublin that have changed very little. Modern growth has changed the landscape of Ireland.

Thanks for the comments.

Dub.

I`d be interested to know what type of lens you used. Those originals looked like they were taken with a 28mm but that would have been quite an unusual lens in those days. Looking again it may have been a 35mm.

Paulw

I used a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens.

I believe he used a 50mm lens on his camera.

Most of my shots are at 35mm (1.3x crop factor on the body), to try to get as close as possible.

Rickwellwood

congratulations i really enjoyed looking through these. Well done - great idea.

Paulw

Dub. wrote: »

I`d be interested to know what type of lens you used. Those originals looked like they were taken with a 28mm but that would have been quite an unusual lens in those days. Looking again it may have been a 35mm.

I've done some digging and found out that he used "Contax II A" camera by Zeiss Ikon of Stuttgart, Germany with "Carl Zeiss Sonnar F/1.5 50mm. (2 in.)" lens.

A bit different to my Canon 1D MkIV with a Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L lens.

Balfey1972

Great stuff Paul. Alot of patience required on that project.
Great work and well done.

HivemindXX

Very interesting, thanks for posting it.

One thing I noticed was how dirty a lot of the buildings were in the old pictures. The ban on coal and emission controls for cars can probably be thanked for that improvement.

eyeball kid

Well done Paul. Very interesting project.

Very glad to see that a lot of the buildings are still here today and that it
hasn't changed too much.

Cookie_Monster

Well done, that's really cool.

in "Dame Street corner with George's Street"
are there building now missing on the left, that's where the central bank is now, isn't it?

The difference with some of the trees is a really interesting comparison

si_guru

Brilliant!

cdaly_

Paulw wrote: »

I'm going to look for similar types of street/architectural images, and may try to recreate them too. I know some parts of Dublin have changed so much you'd barely recognise anything from 20 years ago, never mind further back. And, there are also areas of Dublin that have changed very little. Modern growth has changed the landscape of Ireland.

Thanks for the comments.

I was looking at some of the Cushman images some time ago and the contrast between then and now is huge when you look at some of the aerial photos taken on his flight into Dublin. There are images of Bray where you can recognise the railway station and promenade and of Baldoyle racecourse. Comparing these with google maps satellite images shows such a huge change in these areas...

Bray 1961 and from google today
Baldoyle Racecourse 1961 and from google today

ThisRegard

The pick of Grafton Street is sad, it looked fantastic then but in the present pic where HMV is now, what the hell where they thinking with that new facade ? Why did they change that building completely ?

Shikei

That was really interesting, nice work! One thing that struck me was the Gay Pride flags flying on the quays now, nice reminder of how far civil rights have come : ) Also the way there were cars parked in so many places that are now off limits, hope we can decrease even further the amount of cars driving in the city centre and replace them with bikes!

Paulw

I was surprised how many bikes there were, and they were all on the road and not on the path like now.

I think Dame St and George's St have changed the most. The Central bank certainly took a large portion of old buildings away, as well as the other civic offices up near Parliament St.

I've just had the Independent on to me, wanting to run an article about the whole thing. So, you may just see some of this in print soon.

G Luxel

are there any other pictures taken around this time by the same photographer in Ireland...say rural areas or other towns and cities...I love these pictures....:D

hmboards

These are superb! Great project. It is sad to see what a mess (IMHO) the architects made of designing some of the replacement buildings, but it's great to see how many of the old ones are still standing too.

Paulw

G Luxel wrote: »

are there any other pictures taken around this time by the same photographer in Ireland...say rural areas or other towns and cities...I love these pictures....:D

One of Drogheda. Seems he travelled around Dublin a bit, then up to NI, then back and flew out of Dublin. Nothing else around Ireland.

But, plenty in the UK.

Freddie59

Take a bow Paul.

Those 1961 shots are incredible in their quality. What are notably missing in them are..........traffic lights!

Well done again!

Thoie

G Luxel wrote: »

are there any other pictures taken around this time by the same photographer in Ireland...say rural areas or other towns and cities...I love these pictures....:D

Not the same photographer, but there was a chemist in Cobh who had a big collection of photos of the town from (I think) the 1940s to 1960s. Can't remember his name at the moment, but if anyone's interested I can find out.

Paulw

600,000 website hits in a week, just for this project.

Two online websites want to carry links to it and do a story about it, as well as an article in this coming Monday's Independent.

Plenty of good publicity from this project.

TheAnswer

Firstly, love the photos Paul, well done and a pleasure to view.
I personally think the city looks so much better now than it did 50 yrs ago, the beautiful buildings covered in soot (my childhood memories of Dublin are of manky black buildings!) are indicative of the air quality back then and to see the trees on the liffey now after 50 yrs growth is lovely.
Just one tiny critique, the photo of the dray horse taken on "Dame Street" is actually Lord Edward Street:)

Rgds.

Paulw

TheAnswer wrote: »

Just one tiny critique, the photo of the dray horse taken on "Dame Street" is actually Lord Edward Street:)

I was using the original photographer's caption, and in a few he got the streets wrong, but I was giving him photographer's license and a tourist's license to get it wrong.

http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/results/detail.do?query=city%3A%22Dublin%22&page=1&pagesize=40&display=thumbcap&action=search&pnum=P12243

Thanks for the comments though. I do agree that the city is cleaner, and the air quality is just so much better now.

Paulw

Well, an article in the Independent today. Not sure I remember saying Dublin is more progressive now though. :rolleyes:

I've had over 1.1million hits on my website this month, so far. :eek: Just had an email from my web host, recommending I take a commercial service with them due to traffic levels and hits.

Another day or two, and I can go back to anonymity again. :cool:

Seasoft

Excellent work PaulW.
I've been tinkering around with a similar project this summer. It's very much a work in (early) progress, but I'm using 49 paintings of Dublin completed in the late '50s and early 60s and trying to re-create the scenes as there are today.

The paintings are in a book called Vanishing Dublin by Flora Mitchell. As the project is a personal one I haven't gone down the road of sorting out copyright etc. from publishers or artist's estate yet. All in good time.

In the meantime, two low-res tasters: The Castle Steps (much as they were); and Derby Court (demolished, and under the Christchurch multi-story car-park) as viewed from Ross Road.

Benster

Paul, congrats on a well executed idea. Commiserations on the next webhosting bill...

There's a similar idea on the go on Flickr that I have been interested in having a go at recently, it might make for an interesting progression of your project. You take a print of an old street and hold it up to try to make it blend in with the modern day scene, then take the shot. Like this.

I first saw this while talking to a guy at a BBC Turn Back Time event in Armagh, it seems there have been a few dedicated folk in some UK towns trying to cover many areas of their locality.

MajorMax

Well done. I'm gouing to show these photos to my mother who was in Dublin at that time. The old Pictures were taken in early June 1961 as can be seen from the flags of Monaco in several of the pictures. The Prince & Princess landed in Dublin on the 10th of June to our usual rainy June weather as can be seen in some of the pictures

Freddie59

MajorMax wrote: »

Well done. I'm gouing to show these photos to my mother who was in Dublin at that time. The old Pictures were taken in early June 1961 as can be seen from the flags of Monaco in several of the pictures. The Prince & Princess landed in Dublin on the 10th of June to our usual rainy June weather as can be seen in some of the pictures

I sent these to a Dub living in NYC for years. He was delighted with them. And paul, regarding Dublin being 'more progressive' the reporter may have been quoting regarding the 'gay pride' comment earlier in this thread.

Paulw

Well, I'll be on TV3 tomorrow to talk about the picts, on the Morning Show with Sybil and Martin.

I just went over the 2 million hits mark on my website.

I still can't get over this. It was a small personal project, and it's gone global.

Necronomicon

You know you've hit the big time when you appear on Cool Vids & Pics & Links

Well done on the success, great project.

K_user

Fantastic project and congrats on the success.

Hopefully in 50 years time someone will be looking at Cushman's, yours and comparing it with their new and updated views.

Paulw

K_user wrote: »

Hopefully in 50 years time someone will be looking at Cushman's, yours and comparing it with their new and updated views.

Are you volunteering??

It would be interesting, if someone did.

bullpost

Have a look here - some amazing stuff from all around Ireland:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/88051129@N00/

G Luxel wrote: »

are there any other pictures taken around this time by the same photographer in Ireland...say rural areas or other towns and cities...I love these pictures....:D

jaybee747

Lovely job.
Noticed they have removed a floor and half a building from the Dublin castle clock tower over the past 50years,what a shame.