Double Take: A Rephotographic Survey of Madison, Wisconsin

by Zane Williams

A stirring combination of photography and history, Double Take presents more than seventy photographic pairs, each one a distinctive "then" and "now" view of the same exact scene, spanning a near-century of change in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. Presented side-by-side and spanning decades, the dramatic transformations comprise one of the most ambitious and original rephotography surveys ever undertaken.
In unprecedented scope and detail, celebrated Wisconsin photographer Zane Williams has precisely replicated the original views of an earlier Madison photographer, Angus McVicar, who first shot these locales from the 1920s to the 1950s. The result is a treasure trove of historic and contemporary images and an uncanny testament to the changes over time in a unique American city.
Sometimes startling in their revelations of loss and gain, of progress and decay, these evocative photographic pairings dare us to look again and again at the nature of time and place. The seeming inevitability of change and the often confounding unpredictability of public taste in our physical surroundings are captured in these documentary still images, moments frozen in the rushing stream of time.

176 pages, Hardcover

First published November 22, 2002