Website of the Week: Back to the Future

Irina Werning wins the prize for coolest/most creative/best photo project I've come across recently. She is self-admittedly a snoop ("As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for [old photos]"), and recently decided to put her snoopiness and curiosity to work. And so, Back to the Future was born. Werning has taken old photos of friends and then invited said friends to recreate the old photos as accurately as possible. The results are pretty amazing. Seeing all the youth and vivacity in the older pictures contrasted with the compound interest of years spent trudging through the shitstorm of adulthood left me feeling kinda nostalgic for these people I don't even know. But despite that, the photos are all still pretty damn funny. Your initial reaction is to laugh, and that's awesome, but I would argue the photos accomplish more than just that: they reveal something about the individual. It's like looking at two end points on a graph and leaving your imagination to fill in the highs and lows that fall in between based on acquired wrinkles, body-fat ratio, hairiness. Werning's attention to detail is what allows us to start drawing these conclusions about the subject's life and is what makes this project truly special. Thumbs up.

Irina Werning: Back to the Future