Existing comment:
A Monumental City in the Making:
At the beginning of the Civil War Washington was far from the monumental city it is today. The streets were unpaved. A fetid canal ran through what is now the National Mall. The Washington Monument was unfinished, as was the Capitol building's imposing dome. The transient population of politicians and government functionaries rarely stayed in town all year, leaving most of the area designated for the city unoccupied. Yet by the end of the war, Washington DC was bustling with a growing population and well on its way to becoming a grand world capital.
Photographer Jason Powell's series "Looking into the Past" is deceptively simple. As he describes it "I take an old photograph that I find interest in some way, visit where it was taken, and hold it up in front of my camera and shoot it in the modern-day context." Sometimes the original photo was taken in the middle of what is now a busy street. Powell states, however, that "so far I have managed to avoid any mishaps, fortunately." Powell grew up in Leesburg, Virginia, and was always interested in history. When he came up with the idea for "Looking Into the Past," he realized that the Washington area was rich in possibilities. |