How big a role does nostalgia play in your photos?

<p>I am deliberately leaving this question totally open-ended. Some may think of nostalgia with respect to the cameras and lenses or other equipment (or mode of processing). Others may think of the subject(s), or the epoch that the photos remind them of in their lives. Others may think of yet something else entirely.</p>

<p>Post photos inline as the spirit moves you. Please don't be afraid to tell some stories about your photography--or through your photography.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>What? No responses? Well, I can always be found on <em><strong>Fakebook</strong></em>.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>I would suppose a little bit of nostalgia plays in my photos, but seeing as I'm not all that experience in life I don't have much nostalgia to work with. Most of it involves going to state parks or locations with my family and getting photos of them similar to photos taken 10-16 years ago. It's too bad I don't have any of the photos anymore, they were all left at my parents house [with some finagling I'm sure I can get some]</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Nostalgia is an illness, that you can die from. I have got rid of it since long, so no, nostalgia does not play a role in my photos. - for others, as viewers of my photos, maybe, for them to say, but not for me. On the contrary, utopia plays a major role: dreams of the future. </p>

<p>I expect that my images are a kind of looking-forward nostalgia. I imagine that, in my later years, I will look upon them as mnemonics of special times and places, of experiences I can no longer have. This is not nearly as morose as it may sound. I hope to live a long time, and to share images and stories with my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. My images, will, I hope, be a catalyst for those conversations. If the images are very good, perhaps they will appeal to a larger audience. If not, then they will always be mine.</p>

<p>Souvenir in the French sense -- remembrance of places and things, even some seen for the first time. There are new photos taken of places I have never been before that strike a chord.<br>

Per Anders, not a place to reside!</p>

<p>Sandy, remembrance does not play a role in my appreciation of where I reside. I'm totally happy where I am, and it does strike a chord everyday, if not, I would move elsewhere and in no way look back. In photographic terms it inspires me all the time in creative terms. The thing is not to project passed sentiments into present setups - as far as that is possible - , and to be able to live new places with a totally open mind to what is new and exciting - looking for utopia and shooting it.<br /> But of course, "utopia" for anyone is a construct created on the basis of past experiences and accumulated knowledge.</p>

<p>Phil, photography "was made for nostalgia" for those that only uses it for that, but since the very start in the 19th century photography was used for creating visual dreams of something beyond the present and the past a dreamy world.</p>

<p>Nostalgia ain't what it used to be. - Yogi Berra</p>

<p><br /> I think it's amusing when I see digital images deliberately manipulated to look like the faded, discolored pictures from cheaply processed film of the 70's and 80's. Kids today seem to think we wanted those blurry, crappy pictures and we loved "the look" so much because mom put those pictures on the fridge. Gosh, look at lil' Abner there, you can almost make out the ice cream sandwich he's eating!</p>

<p>You did say you left the question open-ended on purpose, so kooks like me are free to rant. :)</p>

<p>So, Anders your photos never remind you of when you took them (remembrance of times past)? How can you possibly avoid this? Or do you never look at your old photos, which would be a problem as they are old as soon as you take them? Or are you saying there is no <em>nostalgia</em> when you look back? If so there must be a sort of mechanical brain check that just reestablishes that your were indeed "there and took the shot". There is no other feeling at all? What about shots of loved ones or loved places you have not seen again. You are a "hard" man indeed.</p>

<p>The faded discolored does have a place however as more of an artistic medium than anything else [i feel]. I think there's no point in editing photos to look like film when you can go shoot it yourself [there's really no comparison to Kodachrome or Velvia for example that I've found yet]</p>

<p><em>"remind you of when you took them"</em><br>

Robin, wake up ! It must be clear to anyone who understands the English language (even better understand just a little latin and Greek), that <em>nostalgia</em> has next to nothing to do with reminding me of the past but means to long towards the past. <br>

Nostalgia: "a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past".<br /><br>

Comes from Greek <em>nostos</em> (return home) and <em>algos</em> (pain)</p>

 

<p>Anders, sorry if I wasn't clear, "Nostalgia" is not a place to reside. Not bad to visit briefly on occasion.</p>

<p>As to Utopia, many societies have tried, all have failed, or are currently in the process of failing.<br>

The immutable fact, successful Utopian societies require perfect people. Few, if any, of those have been born.</p>

<p>Sandy, this becomes an exercise in semiotics !<br>

<strong>Utopia</strong> would normally mean some visionary ideal types of society, which mostly are not to be realized, but dreams of future states of life. Something you long towards (longing f"orward", instead of "backwards", like in the case of nostalgia) a society of no wars, no violence, where we all just love each other and inspire each other to be creative, to benefits of all - for example.<br>

If it one day should be realized, it would hopefully immediately be replace by a 'real' new utopia to long for so that utopians could survive !</p>

<p>Semiotics! A 3 Euro word. Semantics, possibly, but words as symbols?<br>

Your faith in humanity is charming, and encouraging, especially in light of the widespread resurgence of barbarism we are seeing in the news every day.<br>

We have diverged from the OP.<br>

Best! S.</p>

 

<p>Nostalgia, or a yearning for home and the pain related to that? That is hard for me to experience, as I am living near my first home. I rarely feel that yearning on trips or contracts elsewhere, even those of several months, as I simply anticipate with pleasure an eventual return. I do occasionally have a yearning for lost times in the company of my deceased parents and friends that causes some pain, but I mainly prefer to think of what I can affect in relations in the future.</p>

<p>If we can separate homesickness and pain from nostalgia, or adopt a different term for it, then I do feel a yearning and partly emotional feeling for some lost elements of society including certain values or symbols (identity, architecture) that have disappeared or about to do so, and some of my photography seeks to express that, insofar as I can express through it the immaterial and transcendental qualities of what I photograph. We cannot revisit the past in an active manner, the present is the past every instant that it occurs, consequently the future is my main interest.</p>

<p>nostalgia is a flavor I often find in photography. Sometimes blatant but I prefer some subtlety, that fleeting elusive something that you can't quite grab. Much like a good nostalgic wave. And something I find intentionally and unintentionally in my photos. Sometimes as the subject other times through my mood influencing how and what I shoot. Like listening to music as I shoot. Music can easily make me nostalgic and it may be music I have never heard before. Or like the odor that conjures a specific memory or more likely a vague connection to a nearly lost memory.<br>

I like the feeling and I like creating visual representations. I most often find nostalgia very soothing, pleasant. It is not just 'the past' for me. It is much more, an emotion. Photography is a really good medium for exploring nostalgia.</p>

<p>I take a lot of photos just to capture a moment in time to be remembered again later. Is that nostalgia?</p>

<p>Nostalgia is longing for a time, a person, or a place in the PAST. Feeling nostalgia about the past is normal. Living in in the past is not.</p>

<p>On the other hand, those whose options for the future are severely limited by advanced terminal illness or other considerations are more likely to spend more time thinking about the past. I don't see that as pathological. That's about all they have left. They are not interested in forming new memories. They are cherishing important memories of past moments.</p>

<p>Photographing the past? Well, we can't do that, can we? Even so, every photo made is instantly in the past. When we look at our pictures--even when we are processing them--we are looking back at the past, and often already beginning that process of idealizing "the way things used to be."</p>

<p><strong>A photo does not necessarily have to be very old to evoke nostalgia or the tendency to idealize the past.</strong><br /> <br /> If your wife left or died yesterday, then last week might be viewed as "the good old days." Then again, maybe not. . .<strong><br /></strong></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Does nostalgia inhere in the photo?</p>

<p>Nostalgia is a longing and thus an emotion. No photo can show nostalgia or any other feeling or emotion, but it can evoke it.</p>

<p>It sounds like we are getting back around to the last long thread on emotions--not my intention, but hard to avoid once we realize that nostalgia is a certain emotion or category of emotion.</p>

<p>Fortunately, there are other moods and emotions besides nostalgia.</p>

<p>I was expecting somewhat more nostalgic allusions to old gear. Some people, after all, really miss shooting with film. I typically do not, but I do miss <a href="/photodb/folder?folder_id=665824"><em><strong>shooting my first digital camera back in 2002 (and following years)</strong></em></a>. I doubt that that has anything to do with the camera I used as much as it has to do with the time. I thus do get nostalgic about shooting about this time of the year in 2002, but I wouldn't want to go back to the old Olympus E-20 that I was shooting back then. My first outings in 2002 with my first digital cameras give me some great memories.</p>

<p>I cannot look at <a href="/photodb/folder?folder_id=734876"><em><strong>shots of an old decrepit house</strong></em></a> without remembering how great a day it was to be out shooting that day--along with remembering some other things that were happening in my life about that time. <a href="/photo/16720192&size=lg"><em><strong>Some shots</strong> </em></a>virtually transport me back to the moment that I took them.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Here is an inline version of the one I linked to in the last post just above.</p>

<p>Seeing this has a great emotional impact on me, more than most old photos of ruins. I can only label that impact "nostalgia."</p>

<p>Nostalgia to me is a rather bitter-sweet emotion. One misses something, and thus there is pain. Yet, one remembers something that is or was <strong><em>good</em></strong>, and therein lies the sweetness.</p>

<p>"Bittersweet": It's an interesting concept when one thinks about it. . . . It's about life. I enjoy feeling some sense of continuity with the past. Sometimes events interfere with that sense of continuity.</p>

<p>Can photography be a therapeutic force in helping to give us a sense of the integrity, the wholeness, of our lives? Without a sense of some continuity in our lives, I am not sure that we are fully human.</p>

<p>What is true for photography is likely true of other art forms as well--especially music.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p><div></div>

<p>So we now where we came back to nostalgia and remembrance lets get some examples.<br /> Here is a family photo from 1863 of Danish militia (with a forefather at the centre) preparing for the Prussian war, where many of them died and the country lost it's southern regions which only partly came back to the mother land by referendum in 1922. Nostalgia ? I could long back to those days of many reasons, but no, not at all. Yes, they inspire me to shoot photos for future generations.<br /> I love the boy on the hill side behind, who obviously moved while the photo was shot !</p><div></div>

<p>Thanks to everybody for getting me thinking. - I found out: Nostalgia doesn't play the role it should deserve (yet). Although I picked some cameras for that reason or occasionally got trigger happy in some nostalgic environments, I should probably push the thing way further.</p>

<p>Lannie,</p>

<p>nostalgia and love for former times can be different things, emotionally at least. In this photo my partner in life is looking at a neighbour's barn that was ill maintained and finally bulldozed to clear the site. Because we enjoyed its worn presence and tried to get help for the farmer to rehabilitate it the photo evokes a little sadness for me.</p>

<p>In the second image (sorry, I keep forgetting how to upload as links) their is no nostalgia for the often disappeared 1950s-60s chip wagons as this one is still active in 2015 (the modern road sign belies the date of capture) and is a regular meeting place for the mountain village community (The village name, "Les Éboulements", refers to a 1639 landslide here). I would simply refer to it as love for former times.</p>

<p>The third image is the same, but carries a different yearning. It is current (the house was being demolished to be recycled) and I love the presence of the timber framer's traditional assembly symbols beside his beautifully cut dovetail joints of the former 1850s house. Not sadness but a longing perhaps for a once prominent trade.</p><div></div>

<p>Noon at the chip wagon</p><div></div>

<p>And finally, the timber framer's circa 1850s markings are apparent on the wood of this house being demolished and recycled elsewhere.</p>

<p>Do these strike you as being different?</p><div></div>