Then & now

Then & now is not a competition and not a quiz. It is an old photograph and the question of where exactly it was taken. Each city has seven or eight of them ready: a market square around 1900, a station that is no longer standing, a street full of trams. Every photograph is tied to the spot the photographer stood on, and that spot is on the map.

You go there, read the line that tells you how to stand, and hold your phone the way he held his camera. Then you take the photograph again. You get the two side by side on one card, with the year alongside, and that card is yours to keep or to share.

Your new photo never leaves your device. The card is put together in your own browser rather than on our side: there is nothing to upload, so there is nothing to store either. The old photograph comes from us, with a note of where it came from.

One spot costs you a few minutes, so you can happily do a single one because you are nearby anyway. All the spots in a city one after another make an afternoon's walk. All you need is a phone, and there is no clock, no score and no fixed order. Children often enjoy hunting for the right vantage point more than taking the picture itself, and it works well for a team outing because everybody makes their own card on their own phone. Every spot also has its own link, so you can send one to somebody who lives there.