Dutch artist, Ard Gelinck has been dishing up nostalgic magic for years. His series of celebrities hanging out with their younger selves seamlessly blends the past with the present. He has over 293 thousand followers on Instagram, and his page is a gorgeous gallery of famous faces traveling through time. In a world where photoshop fails are flooding the internet, Gelinck’s work puts the wow factor back into digital manipulation.
Bored Panda has shared his pics on several occasions. Because we love them so much, we’ve decided to honor him, and spoil you, with a compilation of his best ever photos. Keep scrolling for a trip down the Hollywood walk of memory lane. And don’t forget to upvote your favorites.
#1 Keanu Reeves
Image credits: ardgelinck
#2 Robin Williams
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#3 Betty White
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Gelinck is a self-taught “photoshoppper”. He spends between one and three hours on each image. "Sometimes, I react to a news item, a birthday, or day of death and then post an edit of that celeb as an honor or celebration," he previously told Bored Panda. Gelinck has become somewhat of a celebrity in his own right. And many of the famous faces he's featured love his work. Madonna, Sylvester Stallone, Ricky Gervais, and Snoop Dogg are among some of those who have shared his photos.
#4 Harrison Ford
Image credits: photo_time_traveling
#5 Pink
Image credits: ardgelinck
#6 Freddie Mercury
Image credits: photo_time_traveling
Gelinck uses editing software called Adobe Photoshop. He has this advice for anyone wanting to try their hand at some digital photo manipulation: "You have to buy that software and just begin and try and practice a lot until, in my case, you have the luck that a lot of people like it." But as we’ll explain a bit later, sometimes you’ll need a lot more than luck to ensure success. And to avoid your photos being shared for all the wrong reasons.
#7 Anthony Hopkins
Image credits: ardgelinck
#8 Morgan Freeman
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#9 Tom Hanks
Image credits: photo_time_traveling
Gelinck made headlines again this year when he took his "Then And Now" series a step further. He photoshopped some images and then enlisted the help of a “friend” to finish the work. The photos were turned into a video that showed celebrities hugging their younger selves.
“MINDBLOWING!!” he posted on Instagram in July. “Of the 20 images in this video, I created 17 and someone(Ai) finished it.” Followed by a bunch of emojis. Gelinck then went on to say that it was unbelievable, and "Ai is fun but also really, really crazy and scary and also moving. Ai don’t know where this ends."
#10 Barack Obama
Image credits: photo_time_traveling
#11 Bruce Willis
Image credits: ardgelinck
#12 April 21 In Loving Memory Of Her Majesty The Queen. A Heavenly Birthday
Image credits: ardgelinck
Gelinck’s post managed to clock up over 20 thousand likes on Instagram. But it was met with mixed reactions. Some were wowed. While others were clearly freaked out. X user @jrawson shared the video and joked that they “might have found the most cursed thing on the internet”.
@aerocles reposted the video with the caption, “Hey AI what would it look like if a bunch of celebrities were in love with their younger selves? Make it really awkward and creepy.”
“Even with recent years' leaps and bounds in sophistication, these sorts of outputs are still so uncanny that they even seem to freak out the people creating them — a certain indictment of the reality of generative AI as it stands today,” wrote The_Byte.
#13 Matt LeBlanc
Image credits: photo_time_traveling
#14 Johnny Depp
Image credits: photo_time_traveling
#15 Meryl Streep
Image credits: ardgelinck
It’s intentionally obvious that Gelinck's his images are photoshopped. But there are times some other people have posted overpolished pictures that they want us to believe are perfectly pure. Some photoshop fails that were definitely not the flex they set out to be.
#16 Daniel Radcliffe
Image credits: ardgelinck
#17 David Bowie
Image credits: photo_time_traveling
#18 Drew Barrymore
Image credits: ardgelinck
The royal family rocked the boat big time this year, when Kate Middleton released a Mother’s Day photo. It featured the princess sitting on a chair, flanked by her three children. The pic was uploaded to Instagram, and landed in the inboxes of news editors around the world. To the untrained eye, it seemed like nothing out of the ordinary.
But within a few hours, the photo was pulled from some of the biggest news agencies on the planet. Associated Press, AFP, and Reuters, all refused to publish the photo, saying it had been altered in violation of their photography standards.
#19 Jeff Bridges
Image credits: ardgelinck
#20 Kate Winslet
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#21 Pierce Brosnan
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Middleton admitted she’d manipulated the image and had to say something to settle the storm. "Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing," she wrote in a statement posted to the Prince and Princess of Wales's social media accounts. "I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused."
Social media users didn’t skip a beat. They made the most of the situation, and there were memes for days. The amateur photoshoppers had been let loose, and they were running wild with perfectly imperfect posts.
#22 Michelle Obama
Image credits: photo_time_traveling
#23 Cate Blanchett
Image credits: ardgelinck
#24 Jason Momoa
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The Kardashians are also constantly criticized for their photoshop faux pas. Khloe has come under fire for her unusually elongated fingers. She’s even been accused of editing out her leg once. Kylie has deleted pics after fans noticed photoshop fails. Kris Jenner once posted the exact same photo as Gordon Ramsay - except it wasn’t exactly the same. And Kim, well… she’s been accused of editing everything from her waist to her face.
#25 Christina Applegate
Image credits: photo_time_traveling
#26 Carrie Fisher
Image credits: ardgelinck
#27 Robert Downey
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#28 Haley Joel Osment
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#29 Mark Hamill
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#30 Ryan Reynolds
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#31 Macaulay Culkin
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#32 Winona Ryder
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#33 Robert De Niro
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#34 Michael J. Fox
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#35 George Clooney
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#36 Reese Witherspoon
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#37 Pedro Pascal
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#38 Jennifer Aniston
Image credits: photo_time_traveling
#39 Neil Patrick Harris
#40 Keanu Reeves And Carrie-Anne Moss
Image credits: ardgelinck
#41 Emma Watson
Image credits: photo_time_traveling
#42 Lady Gaga
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#43 Tom Hardy
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#44 Marilyn Monroe
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#45 Denzel Washington
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#46 Ricky Gervais
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#47 Brad Pitt
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#48 Elton John
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#49 Boy George
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#50 Brigitte Bardot
Image credits: ardgelinck
