In November 2013 we co-convened the conference Nostalgias: Visualising Longing which explored multiple concepts of nostalgia and how longing manifests itself within contemporary culture. The conference was a collaboration between Canterbury Christ Church University and the University of the Arts London Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC) at the London College of Communication, and took place at the Winter Gardens, Margate, UK. To coincide with this, we curated an exhibition entitled Nostalgias, inviting ten national and international artists to explore, respond and represent nostalgia(s) in its many forms. In this special issue of Photography and Culture we present some significant photography-based papers and photographic works that were covered in the two-day conference. This research reflects the diverse range of topics and ideas that were discussed and which contributes to contemporary investigations into nostalgia.
Traditionally, nostalgia is associated with a wistful yearning to return to a bygone age, often filtered through rose-tinted memories of the past. The word was first used by Johannes Hofer (1669–1752 ) in 1688 as a way to describe the longing for home (or homesickness) experienced amongst his research subjects, such as Swiss soldiers fighting abroad. It was considered a medical condition, an illness in need of a cure. Over time, the use of the word has progressively evolved to describe a desire to return to another time. Significantly, it is now characterized by yearning and distance (both in time and space); it is the desire to return, when returning is no longer possible. Both these types of nostalgia have one thing in common; they are formed from a point of loss. Indiscriminately, nostalgia, whether it is rooted in the temporal and geographical, is tinged with pathos, as it is ultimately a longing for something that is unobtainable.
We deliberately chose to use the word ‘nostalgias,’ an ‘incorrect’ pluralization of the word, as it highlights the different interpretations that are hidden behind the use of the word in the singular form. Nostalgia can be defined expansively, and encompasses a range of emotional responses to the triggers of time and place. For example, it has been identified as a way of managing loss, a marketing device and a tool of propaganda that makes reference to the past as a means to shape the future. The conference explored types of nostalgias across a range of art and media-based practices: photography, film, television, music, archives, consumer culture, psychology and social media.
Photography, in particular, has a long association with nostalgia, which is evident in the common practice of keeping family albums to serve as a record of events, viewed at a later time in order to evoke memories of the past. The photograph mediates time, immobilizing a moment and reducing it to a two-dimensional representation of an event, location, circumstance or person. In effect, the photograph can never represent the present; the moment encapsulated has passed, never to be experienced again. Almost immediately after its invention, the photograph was quickly used as a device of remembrance, a way of preserving memories, allowing a moment to be recalled at will using the photographic print as a trigger. The photographic image is not a source of the longing in itself, but has to be accompanied with an account, a memory or a narrative, in which the longing can be invested, revisited and charged with emotion. Unlike other forms of visual recording, the photographic print was more affordable and easier to produce, creating an almost realistic likeness of the subject. In light of this, photography became a popular method of collecting and sharing moments, people and places that was affordable and open to all people irrespective of class. It was these traits that were used by photographic companies to market and advertise photography to consumers, encouraging people to record and remember their lives, retaining the images as memorialization.
Yet, vernacular practices have changed and progressed with technology, and although many more photographic images are taken today, the number of photographs printed has reduced. Photographs are now more likely to be viewed on computer screens, tablets and mobile phones, and the images are often shared with many more than previously. While the concept of an album still exists, the contents are less likely to be set aside for family members, but often shared with a wider group of people through the Internet, especially on social media. On these new platforms for sharing images, nostalgia is used to encourage interaction with users. Facebook uses its function ‘On This Day’, to look back at ‘memories’ from previous year, while the app ‘Timehop’ delivers millions of users a daily dose of their own past, posting images accompanied by slogans such as ‘Old is awesome’ and ‘Your best memories, fresh daily’ on their websiteFootnote1. Through this, nostalgia and photography have become part of daily life, with the photograph being a key component in sustaining feelings of longing, and in turn increasing the individuals’ emotional dependency on social media platforms.
Nostalgia is not lived experience, but rather a form of narrative that is fundamentally underpinned by an ideological sentiment. It can be wistfulness for something remembered through a lens of distance that allows the negative aspects of memory to be overlooked in favour of the positive. In her observations of nostalgia, cultural theorist Susan Stewart (1993, 21) argues that ‘nostalgia, like any form of narrative, is always ideological: the past it seeks has never existed except as narrative, and hence, always absent, that past continually threatens to reproduce itself as a felt lack.’ It is this sense of emptiness or longing for an idealized version of events, which unites all the work presented in this special issue and characterizes our contemporary idea of nostalgia.
The first essay, ‘Still Lives: Photography, Nostalgia, and the Child Who Has Died’ by Nancy Martha West, examines ‘remembrance photography’; the practice of photographing children that have died. Her essay explores nostalgia through historic and contemporary postmortem photography and how these photographs act as a memorialization for the grieving families.
The second essay ‘Pictures or it Didn’t Happen: Photo-Nostalgia, iPhoneography and the Representation of Everyday Life’ by Mike Chopra-Gant continues the discussion about nostalgia, but examines the role of smartphones, image sharing, filters and contemporary vernacular photography. By suggesting nostalgia is not simply about a desire to return to the past as it was, faithfully recreated, but tinged with fantasy and imagination. It can be the return to an ideological past, where past times, seen through rose-colored (Instagram) filters always seem better. On social media it can be common to concentrate and post about the positive (looking) aspects of daily life, selecting images and angles that present a romanticized reality. It is this blending of truth and fiction that is explored in the essay ‘Nostalgia and Retro-Femininity in Self-Presentations of 50+Women on Flickr’ by Anna Kurpaska, where the author looks at nostalgia and the sexual politics of retro-femininity in the photo-sharing practices of women who share eroticized photographs of themselves online. These two essays consider related contemporary forms of nostalgia that might be symptomatic of changes in culture conveyed through the development of new technology.
The last essay ‘Between Pixels and Play: The Role of the Photograph in Videogame Nostalgias’ by Alison Gazzard, also examines the collective memories shared via Flickr, and the importance of photography in understanding the history of arcades beyond the games and graphics. One thing is the nostalgia for the screen or the game itself often referred to in the history of videogames, but Gazzard here explores nostalgia for the actual ‘play space,’ through photographs taken during the act of playing.
The importance of photography and archive in preserving a visual history, collective memory and nostalgia is almost unquestionable, however, as West argues, ‘images do not automatically produce nostalgia; they need a narrative to create an emotional connection between the viewer and the subject’ and ‘nostalgia dramatizes what is implicit in every memory act – the imposition of a story on retrieved information’ (West 2000, 175). In the Archive section, presented by Meg R Jackson, we can explore Ostalgie, a wistful remembrance of the Ost, or East, particularly referring to the German Democratic Republic (GDR). With access to Manfred Beier’s archive, she has examined this social documentary, public archive of ‘storyable images’ but also, as she argues, a highly private story through a period of German war history.
Sylwia Chrostowska writes a creative response to a photograph by Gilbert Garcin in the section One Photograph, exploring not only nostalgia and how we look at the past, but the notion of the future not being what it used to be. She plays with ideas of nostalgia being a lost sense of possibility, and the contrast between past and future contained within this one image.
In effect the photograph can also be a form of planned nostalgia; a pre-emptive action to remember a person, place or event at a later date. This idea becomes the starting point for the work of photographer Dafna Talmor. Her series Constructed Landscapes, is formed from a collection of images that were originally taken as keepsakes of places she has lived and worked. However, the final work collocates these different locations, overlaying them to produce a ubiquitous but emotionally charged scene. In merging these various sites of personal memory, Talmor produces a non-specific place, or an idealistic representation of ‘home’ amalgamated from several locations. Talmor’s work embodies the notion of home as a conflation of places and ideas, to which returning is denied. Her work visually presents the idea of modern nostalgia identified by cultural theorist Svetlana Boym in her book The Future of Nostalgia (2001). Boym writes: ‘Modern nostalgia is a mourning for the impossibility of mythical return, for the loss of an enchanted world with clear borders and values; it could be a secular expression of a spiritual longing, a nostalgia for an absolute, a home that is both physical and spiritual, the edenic unity of time and space before entry into history’ (Boym 2001, 8). In Talmor’s exploration of nostalgia it becomes clear that photographic practices continue to be significant methods in visualizing longing.
Our aim in this special issue is to gather different nostalgias and present them with the intention of creating new dialogues about longing in photography and culture, which intends to extend the understanding of nostalgia beyond the singular idea and present some of its more nuanced complexities. All the contributors to this special issue either spoke at the conference Nostalgias: Visualising Longing, 9–10 November 2013 at the Winter Gardens, Margate, UK or participated in the coinciding exhibition Nostalgias, 1–12 November 2013 at Pie Factory Gallery, Margate, UK. We would like to thank all the participants and delegates that joined us in Margate, and everyone who has worked on contributing to this special issue of Photography and Culture.
Notes on contributors
Monica Takvam is a photographer, visual artist and curator living and working in London. Her work uses photography, tactile materials and sound to explore questions around home, nostalgia, self-image, individuality, blindness and perception. Takvam works closely with her participants, often over long periods of time, engaging people in collaborative and personal work. Her work has been published and shown in exhibitions in the UK, Norway, Italy and the States, and she recently won the Celeste Visible White Photo Prize 2016. Takvam was a research affiliate at University for the Creative Arts from 2012 to 2014. She currently lectures at the University of the Arts London, London College of Communication and City of Westminster College, and is Managing Director of Renaissance Photography Prize, whilst continuing to work on her research and personal projects.
Sam Vale is an academic and internationally exhibited artist interested in the use of photography as a means to explore different experiences of time and space. He is Programme Director of the photography course at Canterbury Christ Church University. He received a doctorate in philosophy from the London College of Communication for his practice-based research project “Collecting Rooms,” which examined the private spaces of collectors. His ongoing research combines ideas of biography, nostalgia and material culture in order to examine the way that narratives are formed, told and re-presented. In particular he is focused on the nuances that make people individuals, creating artworks that combine narratives gained in relation to objects, memory, experience and longing. These artworks aim to reveal intimate stories that show insights into individual circumstances and personal situations.
Notes
References
- Boym, Svetlana. 2001. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books.
- Hofer, Johannes. 1688. Dissertatio Medica de Nostalgia. Basel.
- Stewart, Susan. 1993. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
- West, Nancy Martha. 2000. Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.