The website Enterreno is building the first “collaborative time machine” using historical images, allowing thousands of people to travel through time via their mobile devices from anywhere in the country or the world. The platform features over 45,000 photographs revealing what Chile was like in both the distant and recent past, shared by everyday people from their family archives and other sources.
This initiative has received several accolades for its contribution to preserving and sharing the country's historical memory. When it launched in 2014, its co-founders were selected as part of the “100 Young Leaders” by El Sábado magazine and El Mercurio for their social media efforts. A year later, Andrés Bello University and the YouthActionNet program awarded them a grant to begin building the platform. It was not until 2016, through a crowdfunding campaign supported by Enterreno's followers, that enough capital was raised to build the web platform that exists today.
The platform's main innovation is that every photograph is georeferenced to the exact spot where it was taken. As the database grows, this will allow mobile devices to become true windows into the past, leveraging each user's GPS and internet connection to place them in a historical context. The project aims to allow people to walk through our cities and scan landscapes across different eras.
Within this open digital archive, visitors can find images from when “Santiago was countryside,” historic scenes from September 18th celebrations, a must-see section featuring the strangest photos in Chilean history, painful records of the genocide committed against the indigenous peoples of the southern canals, and images of beautiful buildings that have since disappeared from Santiago.
What makes this project—led by architects Nicolás Fernández and Felipe Bengoa—so interesting is that anyone can easily and quickly contribute via the website www.enterreno.com.
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Below is a selection of before-and-after images of 10 Chilean locations curated by the website.
1. View of Plaza Baquedano from the Metropolitan Park, Santiago. 1935 — 2015
2. Wulff Castle in Viña del Mar. 1930 — 2017
3. Plaza Sotomayor in Valparaíso. 1930 — 2015
4. Lastarria Neighborhood from Santa Lucía Hill. 1865 — 2011
5. Subida Ecuador in Valparaíso. 1925 — 2010
6. View of Plaza Baquedano facing east, Santiago. 1960 — 2015
7. Santiago Stock Exchange Building. 1935 — 2013
8. Downtown La Serena. 1930 — 2015
9. Monument to the Heroes of Iquique, Valparaíso. 1900 — 2015
10. View of the Alameda from Santa Lucía Hill, Santiago. 1941 — 2016
Text courtesy of www.enterreno.com
This article was originally published on the Enterreno blog under the title “Antes y después de 10 lugares de Chile". You can see more posts like this here and follow their Instagram.
This article was written by Fernanda Amaro. The translation is powered by AI.
.jpg?1516041525 "Discover the before and after of 10 places in Chile thanks to Enterreno")
