Cover Story: Before and After

A few years ago, as the dismantling of Atlantic Steel gave way to the rise of Atlantic Station, Greg Germani had a thought: Wouldn't it be cool to take pictures of the old mill before bulldozers leveled it, and then return to the same spot to take more pictures once the apartments and townhouses and stores went up? Wouldn't a then-and-now sequence of that spot speak volumes about Atlanta's endless drive to reinvent itself?

But even though he worked at Turner Broadcasting, so close he could practically hear the construction, Germani never got around to it.

"I was too lazy," he says. "I never did it. And I work 500 yards from there! There was no excuse whatsoever."

The missed opportunity gnawed at Germani, a 41-year-old California transplant who lives with his wife, Suellen, and their mutt, Skeeter, in a brick house on a quiet street off Lawrenceville Highway in Decatur. Both Greg and Suellen are fascinated by history, and, more specifically, the 1950s. They've spent countless summer nights at the Starlight Drive-In on Moreland Avenue watching cheesy horror films. They own a 1959 Chevy Impala that boasts a fresh paint job.

So it was predictable that when he stumbled onto Georgia State University's online archive of thousands of old photos of the Atlanta area, Germani would be fascinated. What wasn't so predictable is what he would do next.

Since the fall of 2003, Germani has returned to the places where the archival photos were taken. He stands exactly where the original photographers once stood, and trains his 3.2 megapixel Nikon digital point-and-shoot in precisely the same direction. Today, he has taken more than 400 pictures that way. Pairing each photo with its antecedent, he posts them on his website, www.atlantatimemachine.com.

The pictures comprise a remarkable look at how much Atlanta has changed in the past half-century. The Atlanta Crackers' old outfield is now a Borders parking lot. An old gentleman's club is now a MARTA station. And downtown, which was once the entertainment and social center of the city, is now a ghost town on nights and weekends.

But while it might be tempting to extract a political agenda from the project, Germani himself is philosophical about the juxtapositions. For instance, urban renewal saw some of Atlanta's most historic architecture razed. Even the Fox Theatre at one point was in danger of falling to the wrecking ball before the community joined hands in protest.

"It bugs me, but I try not to get too bent out of shape about Atlanta in particular, because it did happen everywhere, although Atlanta might be worse," he says. "Atlanta does have a tendency to tear down a lot of stuff."

And not all of the changes have been for the worse, Germani points out.

"Look at those old photos of downtown Atlanta. There's hardly a single picture that includes a tree. Now, if you look at the contemporary photos, virtually all of them have trees. I can't imagine how hot it must have been in downtown with no trees to provide shade for the sidewalks." Germani is talking as he drives west on North Avenue, heading toward southwest Atlanta. On today's agenda is an old church on Ashby Street, which is now Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard. (Trying to keep up with Atlanta's penchant for renaming streets is a chronic annoyance for Germani, who thinks historical figures' names should appear on schools and libraries, not streets that already have names.)

He's also looking for a building that used to house an old grocery store on Jefferson Street, near the intersection with Echo Street. When Germani finally finds the building, it's the only structure left standing in an industrial wasteland west of Georgia Tech, near King Plow Arts Center. The building appears to have been converted into a loft, but no one's around. With a print-out of the original picture in his left hand, Germani darts his eyes from the print-out to his camera's LED display and back again, tilts the camera in just the right direction, and presses the shutter. He doesn't dawdle; usually after one or two shots, he's on his way.

Germani estimates that 80 percent of the photos he's taken have been done from his bike. Unless it's raining, he commutes to work on his bicycle.

At the beginning of the project, Germani could easily get eight or 10 pictures on his way home. Now, as the demands of the project take him farther afield, he's forced to use his car.Down Echo Street, Germani finds his next target, a rundown automotive garage. But the cinderblock walls indicate the building shares nothing more than a footprint of the old one. He drives on without getting out.

"I try to make sure there's some physical object that stays the same," he says. "I like to have something tangible you can see in both photos, like a picture where the building still stands. That's what really fascinates me - how the land looks different, how the trees have grown, how the buildings around have changed, how the neighborhood looks."

Back at home, he uploads the digital shots onto his desktop computer. Once he's assembled a few dozen, he'll update his website.

It ties together a lot of his interests: vintage photography, map-reading, exploring the city and riding his bike.

Most important, it satisfies his need to preserve that which is unique - and fleeting - about Atlanta.

"So much of culture seems to be going into a global direction," he says. "A hit movie has to be the hit movie all over the world. Regionalism is dying off. And I really like regionalism. It's regional history that sets Atlanta apart."

Steve.Fennessy@creativeloafing.com

It’s 1951, and you’re looking south on Peachtree from Third Street. The Fox Theatre is on your right, the Georgian Terrace Hotel on your left. That guy in the convertible is clearly the bomb.

The Rialto Theatre hosted the premiere of Proud Rebel, an Alan Ladd movie, in 1958. Today, the Rialto Center for the Performing Arts is run by Georgia State University.

Home of the Atlanta Crackers, just across the street from the Sears Building, the old Ponce de Leon ballpark site is now the parking lot for the Borders/Home Depot/Whole Foods plaza on Ponce.

Home to the city's first luxury apartments in 1898, the Frances Hotel, pictured here in 1952, fell into disrepair and was torn down in 1988. The street it was on, Ivy Street, is now known as Peachtree Center Avenue, obviously because there weren't enough streets with Peachtree in the title. That's Sacred Heart Church on the left.??