Phil Harvey, who started the social media group Sydney Then and Now (STAN), has always been amazed by how quickly Sydney’s streets have changed. He says, “I’ve been interested in then and now photography for as long as I can remember.”

The law company clerk’s first attempt to make a comparison between now and then was when he was 15 years old, in 1980. He used a picture of his family’s home in Drummoyne from that time, which was in sepia, and showed a very different veranda in front of the house. He has been interested in it all his life, but he turned it up a notch not long ago.

“One night in 2013, I was looking online for pictures of Sydney from then and now and saw that there were none on Facebook,” he says. “I started making a few myself by searching Trove for old photos and then Google Street View for the right view. I then joined the two together as one image.”

He first posted these composite photos to the Old Sydney Album Facebook page, which he co-administrates. They quickly became so famous that they needed their page on the social media site, and that’s how STAN came to be. Since then, it has grown to include Instagram and Twitter.

These are some of our favorite Instagram posts from Sydney Then and Now.