While time touring to hang around along with your youthful self could solely appear doable in films like The Adam Project, a real-life photographer and musician in Montreal has come fairly near pulling it off. Unlike within the movie, Conor Nickerson didn’t convey collectively his grownup and youthful selves to avoid wasting the world—he merely thought it will be an fascinating artwork challenge.

Nickerson received the concept to journey again in time utilizing Photoshop 5 years in the past when he was visiting dwelling and looking out by means of previous images. He had not too long ago created a collection titled Then and Now, the place he retook previous pictures taken round Montreal and superimposed a present picture over it. As he informed Gizmodo through e mail, the collection gave viewers the choice of “being able to slide back and forth between the past and present.”

He thought doing an identical factor along with his childhood images could be a superb Photoshop problem as a result of it will take numerous fine-tuning to make the images look practical.

Inspired, the photographer started working, and spent round six months on his Childhood collection. Nickerson informed Gizmodo that he was initially simply going to share the challenge with household and mates, however determined at some point to place it on the subreddit r/pics in 2017. His publish went viral, and his images appeared in news outlets within the U.S., Canada, and the UK.

Meanwhile, on 2017 Reddit, customers additionally delighted in Nickerson’s challenge. People referred to as him a time traveler, whereas others steered he Photoshop himself into his mother and father life occasions subsequent. The unique target market, his household, loved the images as nicely. In truth, Nickerson seems like his grandparents have informed everybody they met within the final 5 years concerning the Childhood picture collection.

As with all viral tales, over time, Nickerson’s challenge pale away into web historical past. However, as all the extraordinarily on-line know, viral web moments that strike chords have a knack of doing it once more. Recently, the Montreal photographer did a throwback publish on the identical subreddit, r/pics.

“Five years ago, I used Photoshop to go back to my childhood. Here’s me and myself around 1997-2005,” Nickerson wrote.

The publish exploded in popularity as soon as extra, incomes nearly as many upvotes because it did 5 years in the past (64,600 versus 73,100). Nickerson mentioned it was nice to see that the images nonetheless resonated with folks, stating that some discovered the collection to be enjoyable and lighthearted, whereas others mentioned it “made them tear up, feel melancholic, or made them think of their own families or younger selves.”

“At a time when we’re so divided about so many things, the responses to the photos have been a good reminder that we’re all just grown up children, that we all share the same human experience of growing older and trying to figure out how to live in the world,” the photographer informed Gizmodo.

As far as what he’s discovered from Childhood, Nickerson mentioned he’s realized that you simply by no means know what one factor may imply to another person. The photographer defined that he by no means thought his childhood images may have such a big effect on others. The response from the general public reminded him of how artwork is able to reaching folks, its potential for therapeutic, and the way lucky he’s to have the ability to make it, he mentioned.

Considering how many individuals joked that he was a time traveler, Gizmodo requested Nickerson what he would say to his youthful self if he may really return to the late 90s and early aughts and hang around with him.

“As far as what I would say, it’s hard to give just one answer. I am able now to recognize some of the things, both good and bad, from my childhood that led me to become who I am now,” he mentioned. “I think I would ask little me about himself and just listen to what he had to say.”

Click by means of the slides to take a look at Nickerson’s full Childhood collection, that includes himself with himself on a practice, himself with himself dressed as spies, and himself with himself celebrating his grandma’s birthday, together with many extra images.

You can observe him on Instagram at @ConorNickerson.