Yesterday and Today

(Above) New York State, 1970, from Ken Josephson portfolio, 1973/1975 via Artnet.

(Above) Photo by Ken Josephson.

(Above) L.A., 1982, by Ken Josephson portfolio.

(Above) Polapan, 1973, from Ken Josephson portfolio, 1973/1975 via Artnet.


(Above) Oregon State University

(Above) Sweetland Building, Carson City, Nevada

(Above) Thema Woche 23- Alt & Neu, Bild 1

(Above) Savannah Street

(Above) Carroll Street

(Above) Boy Scouts, U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C.

(Above) Inlet Bridge, Washington, D.C.

(Above) Thomas Circle, Washington, D.C.

(Above) 7th Street, Washington, D.C.

(Above) Peace sign (from the early 70s) in front of the Environmental Sciences Building on the U.W. - Green Bay campus.


I HAVE SPOTTED SOME INTERESTING CONCEPTUAL PHOTOGRAPHS ON FLICKR RECENTLY, WHICH triggered a memory of some similar photos I have seen in my studies of contemporary photography. But I just could not recall the photographer until I contacted my friend Alan Griffiths, proprietor of the voluminous and fabulous photography Web site Luminous Lint. I gave Alan a brief description and bingo! Alan nailed it instantly.

Alan reminded me that the photographer is Ken Josephson, who did a series of photographs back in the early 1970s of his own hand holding various photographs or postcards in front of various backgrounds. These conceptual photographs, some of which you see above, played a visual game with the viewer, testing the truths of perception.

The color images are photos from a site on Flickr here. Definitely pay the site a visit—it’s a great photo pool that includes many who have contributed images similar. The difference here is that the images on Flickr focuses on then and now—taking actual vintage photographs and putting them in the same spot in which they were taken. What you have is a visual time machine—then and now.

Kenneth Josephson was born on July 1, 1932 in Detroit, Michigan. He began making pictures with the family’s snapshot camera in 1944, and bought his own 4×5 view camera two years later. He earned a BFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology (1957) where he studied under Minor White. Josephson was a professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1960 to 1997, and a founding member of the Society for Photographic Education. He is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship (1972) and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships (1975 and 1979). His work is in the collections of institutions including the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Bibliotéque National, Paris; and Foograficka Maseet, Stockholm.