The Ghosts of World War II: Haunting Photography of War and Peace

Oct 30, 2012 Source: dailymail.co.uk

This haunting collection of images shows what it would look like if the ghosts of World War II returned to our streets.

The remarkable pictures overlay modern scenes from France with atmospheric photographs taken in the same place during the war.

Historical expert Jo Teeuwisse, from Amsterdam, began the project after finding 300 old negatives at a flea market in her home city depicting familiar places in a very different context.

She researched the background to each of the most interesting finds and created a beautiful series of pictures by super-imposing the old pictures on top of new ones.

Now she has rediscovered photographs of soldiers at war in France and across Europe and put together further sets of evocative and emotional designs.

Miss Teeuwisse believes that making war scenes familiar by linking them to somewhere we recognise heightens their impact.

’I knew what happened there, but knowing the exact spot of some detail will etch it into your visual memory,’ she said.

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Dangerous crossing: Soldiers race up Avenue de Paris in Cherbourg in 1944, speeding past the rubble and over modern-day road markings. The original image from 1944 is laid over a photo taken from the exact same spot today.