With all the never-ending construction, today’s China looks little like it did 10 years ago, never mind what the country was like a century ago. Retaking photos mostly made during the first half of the 20th century, amateur photographer Dheera Venkatraman wanted to show exactly how much the country has changed in the last century.

Venkatraman, who did not wish to share where he is from, as he moved a lot as a child and considers himself a world citizen, collected old black-and-white photos he found in books and on websites, and traveled to about a dozen cities in China. He recreated the old photos as best as he could, matching the specific location and the angle. 

The result is a remarkable set of before-and-after photos, where the skyscrapers of Shanghai’s business district were once farmland, where bridges appear across the Yangtze River in a historical city in Sichuan province, and where residential and commercial buildings have sprouted up to surround ancient temples.

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Sixth Tone: Were there any old photos for which you had trouble finding the original location?

Dheera Venkatraman: I wanted to shoot a lot of comparison pictures in northern China, but I couldn’t photograph anything because the haze was too thick at the time. If I have time I’ll try again in the summer.

Apart from those photos, there were a lot of other photos I failed to reproduce, mainly because I couldn’t find the place where they had been shot. Some are now completely blocked by new buildings. For every photo I was able to reproduce, there were five to ten photos that failed. Many of the successful photos were taken from hills or near rivers. If the old photo was taken from the roof of an old house, then it was hopeless.

Sixth Tone: You called your project “Time Travelling in China.” What did you see during your travels?

Venkatraman: Often we are awestruck at the scale of construction projects in large cities. One thing I noticed is that while we’ve come a long way in terms of building construction, we’re still unable to change the shape of many natural formations. In the photos of Shanghai, Yibin, Hangzhou, and Lanzhou, for example, you can see that the shapes of hills and rivers haven’t changed at all. They have been formed by natural processes over millions of years. It made me realize how small and insignificant we are compared to Mother Nature.

Even though I think a lot of technological developments are positive, we should respect nature and the environment more. We should pay more attention to sustainable construction and development to avoid harming ourselves, because we don’t understand nature. For the time being, we are not stronger than nature.

Sixth Tone: As we can see from your photos, China’s cities have changed enormously. How do you view China’s urbanization? 

Venkatraman: I have no goals or opinions to convey through the pictures. I prefer that everyone have their own interpretation.

The old photo taken of the Bai Causeway in Hangzhou may evoke nostalgia in someone who grew up there. Another old photo of the general chamber of commerce in Wuhan was taken during the Jianghuai flood in 1931, and might represent the lives lost in the natural disasters of the past hundred years. The transformation of Pudong District in Shanghai from shrubs and mud to one of the premier business centers in the world is a manifestation of China’s great economic development and modernization.

On the one hand, China’s development over the last 30 years has greatly improved the lives of Chinese people and put China on the map when it comes to economy and technology. These are good things. But on the other hand, we will soon face a big resource crisis. Natural resources are limited: we can’t cut down trees forever. We should all think carefully about how we can develop sustainably in the future, even about how we should define “development” and “progress” in a world with limited resources. “More” is not necessarily “better.”

So I think there are positive and negative aspects to these pictures. I hope viewers will make up their own minds.

A Chinese version of this article first appeared on The Paper, a sister publication of Sixth Tone.

With contributions from Yang Shenlai and Chen Xiaoyang.