by John L. Vankat

Repeat photography is an eye-catching way to bring history alive. It involves collecting historical photographs, finding the sites where the early photographers stood and reshooting the same scenes. Each repeat photograph is then compared to the historical photograph to reveal how the site has changed from the past to the present. This helps us understand both the past and present, as well as predict and plan for the future.

Over the last 8 years, I precisely repeated 125 historical photographs of landscapes on and around northern Arizona’s beautiful San Francisco Peaks. These pairings of historical and repeat photographs are presented in my recently published book, The San Francisco Peaks and Flagstaff Through the Lens of Time (Soulstice Publishing).