Photography Trend: People Recreating Photos from Their Childhood

Instagram has popularized the vintage look again, leading to the appearance of a new trend, namely, recreated childhood photos. People from across the globe are taking their photo albums and selecting their favorite childhood photos to recreate them now, and the results are funny, sweet, and, at times, bittersweet. These photos are a stunning look into how time changes us—sometimes a lot, sometimes almost not at all.

Various photographers have hopped on this trend. Two such photography projects are “Back to The Future”, undertaken by Irina Werning; and “Young Me/Now Me” by Ze Frank.

Irina Werning’s project started the trend. Her approach is much more hands-on, with her doing the reenactments and the people sending her the pictures. As a result, the pictures are virtually indistinguishable from one another, aside from the fact that the people in the new photos are considerably older.

“Young Me/Now Me,” on the other hand, lets people take the photos themselves. Ze Frank then picks his favorites and publishes them on his website. This led to tones of people taking such pictures, and thus a photography trend was born.

First, we’ll be taking a look at “Back to the Future.” You’ve probably already seen some of the pictures we are about to show you, seeing as this project is so influential. It holds some of, if not the best, recreation of childhood photos you’ll see, and it’s easy to understand why this kind of thing has become so popular.

1. Fer 1970 & 2010 – Childhood Photos Recreated

You could swear that these pictures were all taken at the same time, but they’re actually taken 40 years apart. This is where Irina Werning really shines, making the photographs look contemporary to one another, which makes them even more powerful.

2. Recreated Childhood Photos of My Parents 1970 & 2010

It’s almost like a “spot the difference” photo, here. If you don’t really pay attention, there’s almost no difference between the two pictures. The place looks practically the same, the people seemed to have hardly aged a bit, even some deterioration in the original photo (that’s the one on the right, in case you didn’t notice) has been somewhat reproduced in the new one.

3. Tommy 1977 & 2010

Grown men pulling baby faces is funny; it’s even funnier if they pull the precise baby face that they had in a baby picture. The newer photo is more in focus than the old one, but the composition is still essentially the same, and even the shadows appear to be in the right place.

Recreated childhood photos are all about having fun.

4. Lea T 1995 & 2011

Sixteen years and hardly any difference. The only real difference is at the eyebrows, where we can see that in the 2011 picture, they are plucked. Other than that, the two photos are virtually identical, which makes looking at your own photos from 16 years ago a bit depressing.

5. Puna 2003 & 2011

That is the cutest little wiener-dog ever! It was going to be impossible to make Puna pose in the same way as she did when she was a newborn pup, so the differences are there for everyone to see, but that is completely beside the point because she is just too cute.

6. Sonia y Lauri 1988 & 2011

This is a truly spot-on reenactment of an old photo. Their pose, their close, everything. They even found a hood identical to the one Lori wore in the 1988 original photo. Now, that’s dedication and attention to detail.

Now let’s take a look at Ze Frank’s “Young Me/Now Me”. As we’ve said, this solidified the trend of retaking childhood pictures, encouraging people to do it themselves. That means that there’s more pictures than we can count, and results vary in terms of “quality” of reenactment, so we’re going to show not necessarily the best ones, but some of the ones we think are pretty cool.

7. Young Me/Now Me Photo Reenactment

As far as amateur pictures go, this one is really good. All the main elements in the original picture are still there, and even the lighting and composition seem pretty good.

8. Young Me/Now Me

Since the people in the two photos kind of look nothing alike, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is a fake. But it is hard to think that there’s more than three people in the world who would buy those pants.

9. Young Me/Now Me

This is a real cool concept. Although only four years between the two photos, the change really is drastic and it’s weird thinking how sudden growth occurs.

10. Young Me/Now Me – Childhood Photos Recreated

The house in the background sure changed since the first picture was taken, but the people seem as lively and happy as ever. This is such a cute picture, and it must have been real good fun to go visit wherever that lovely place in the background is.

Wrapping Up: Recreation Of Childhood Photos

Hope you loved this recreated childhood photos trend, and we’d love it if you share your favorite reenactments (or maybe even your own) with us in the comment section below.

Also, check out 4 Photographic Conventions that Originated in Paintings.