Celebrating this year’s anniversary of the end of World War II, we feature the work of amateur Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov. He collected old pictures of several European cities which suffered the heaviest fighting during the great war, then spent 12 months painstakingly travelling to Paris, , Berlin, Moscow, Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and Prague and others to re-create the ‘today’ shots before carefully merging the old and new scenes together using Photoshop on his computer.
“During the Second World War, my grandparents stayed in blockaded Leningrad and protected their city from the enemy. I started collecting old postcards and photos about ten years ago” he describes.
His collages show people the horrors of WWII and the difference between today’s life and those days. First, he finds an old photo, then finds the location where this photo was taken, goes there and takes a new shot. Editing one photo takes Larenkov about a day afterwards.
Streets remain the same, just the view of human pain that was experienced is what have changed. Makes us appreciate our current peaceful life carrying all the respect for those who have sacrificed their lives in the past.
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