According to The Difficult Knowledge Project, a University Of British Columbia initiative led by Dr. Amy Scott Metcalfe, rephotography developed in the natural sciences to demonstrate environmental change, such as erosion or receding glaciers, and has been applied to fields such as sociology to show social change, usually in the built environment (e.g., towns and cities).

Rephotography can also be applied to, for example, the campus or school setting as a way to discuss organizational change and other aspects of the environment.

“Much like many other subreddits created here on Reddit, this subreddit spawned from a comment thread in another unrelated subreddit where a set of images was posted,” the moderator of r/OldPhotosInRealLife, u/Npbugati, told Bored Panda in an earlier interview.

“A friend of mine from high school (who has since deleted his account) originally created the subreddit and added me as a moderator. The first post on the subreddit can be found here and is the image that spawned its creation.”

According to u/Npbugati, their role as moderators is usually pretty hands-off. “We want to allow the community’s upvotes to provide most of the encouragement to keep posts high quality,” they said.

However, in some cases, the mods inevitably have to get involved for everyone’s sake.

“Sometimes, we will have posts that encourage some user to act out in the comments or become overly political or rude. In times like these, we will step in and moderate as necessary to keep the comment section positive,” u/Npbugati explained.

“As I am a software developer, I have created a ‘ghost’ bot of my own that monitors every post and every comment made on the subreddit, scanning for potential issues and even specific keywords, and will create custom reports for us,” they added.

This bot, however, does not have a moderator status, so its “identity” is a complete secret and its actions are invisible.

For the moderator, it’s the historical, architectural, and even scientific aspects of rephotography that keep them passionate about taking care of the entire community.

“I of course think that it is important for us to have a great understanding of history and its [effect on] how we function today. I also … find the preservation of these ancient buildings and structures … very interesting to look at and research more as they are posted.”

Even if someone hasn’t directly experienced the subjects of these photos in one way or another, the mod thinks these comparisons are still worthwhile to explore.