Stonehenge, A History in Photographs

That's the title of a new book, noted in the Guardian. I've always found old photos of older monuments fascinating, not least in revealing how heavily restored, rebuilt, and out of context many of them now are. To a dizzying extent, on occasion -- as when a place known only from old, bucolic images turns out to be on the edge of a busy highway or serving as a public toilet in the middle of a slum. Sometimes the images are a good hundred years old or more, but too often the changes have been wrought in much less time. I think of the pictures my graduate advisor took around Istanbul when he was my age -- it's like a trip into another world.

Posted by David on November 22, 2004 3:58 PM