Picture the Past, Looking to the Future: The Forest History Society's Repeat Photography Portal

Repeat photography is the practice of taking photographs of a specific location at two or more different times. It is a powerful visual resource for scientific study and education in forest and landscape management, and can be used to document the effects of processes or events such as ecosystem succession, fires, disease and pest outbreaks, natural disasters, regeneration, and climate change. Repeat photography is also useful as sociological evidence of change in human environments to display land-use change, urban development, or demographic changes. Essentially, repeat photography is an important technology that provides a way of visualizing change and understanding the nature and effects of time. From working forests to wilderness areas, such photographic pairs or sequences can help us understand ecosystem processes, and effects of human and non-human disturbances. They can inform our concepts of sustainability, help us understand the implications of public policy, and assess the results of management decisions. While many repeat photographs of forested land exist, they are scattered in many locations, occur in widely different formats, and are relatively difficult to find. A centralized database will allow for photographs to be searched by subject keyword, location, date, format, and photographer, among many other characteristics. Additionally, repeat photography sets will be presented with contextual information and individual images will be displayed at detailed resolution for comparison and analysis. The Forest History Society is collecting sets of repeat photographs relating to land management and environmental research. Our goal is to provide a centralized location on the web for users to access, compare, and interpret such visual resources and to make these materials accessible to assist forest managers, land-use planners, community leaders, teachers, policymakers, and journalists in understanding, communicating, educating, and entering into a public discourse about sustainable forests and communities. By providing an authoritative site on the subject, we also hope to identify previously unknown repeat photographic pairs and sequences, promote the creation of new repeat sets, and foster interest in the future uses of repeat photography. The project is a collaboration between the Forest History Society (FHS) and project partners across the country including private landowners, conservation groups, national associations, government units, forest-reliant communities, and many others. Thus far, FHS has collaborated with several different institutions for this project, including the U.S. Geological Survey's Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center and their collection of repeat photographs from Glacier National Park; the University of Arizona and their collection of repeat photographs of the Santa Rita Experimental Range; and the Bureau of Land Management's collection of photographs from their “Historical Comparison Photography” book series of repeat photographs from three different sites in Montana. The Repeat Photography database consists of sequences of photographs taken from the same location. For each sequence, there is a slideshow of all images in the sequence along with contextual information such as sequence name, dates, location, and subject keywords. Users can also view each photograph and its associated metadata by scrolling through and clicking the individual photographs seen in the sequence. There are several different ways to access images in the database: (1) The “Browse” tab allows users to view images grouped according to Subjects, Landscapes, and Sequence titles; (2) the map on the site's homepage allows users to access images by the specific geolocation data associated with the photographs; and (3) the “Search” function returns relevant images from the entire database and offers users the ability to sort results by sequence name, sequence order, or original date of the photograph. To reiterate, the focus of this project is on paired photographs that show changes in landscape and ecological disturbances over time; regeneration and growth of forests; and human effects on the forest including transportation, conversion, and restoration. Users, including students, teachers, landowners, and journalists, will improve their understanding of landscape change, sustainability, and working forests. Foresters, natural resources managers, landowners, and conservation groups will be able to point to specific pairs and landscapes of interest, thereby assisting their own training and communication with the public. There will also be many opportunities to utilize the photographs in K-12 and higher education programs, including those like Project Learning Tree. The end result will be a central resource that provides such information in an engaging and easy-to-use manner. We welcome insights, recommendations, and collaboration in making this valuable historical information more widely available. If you have photographs, research ideas, or any other input that might help, please contact the project's photograph archivist Sara Pezzoni at sara.pezzoni@foresthistory.org. The Repeat Photography Project can be accessed through www.repeatphotography.org.