Untitled

A discussion on {this

Philosophy thread about nostalgia} prompted me to add this photo

and accompanying story.

In 1982, when I was 15, I attended an airshow that featured three of these B-17s, plus two other Second World War heavy bombers. This was extraordinary at the time. I found a spot near the upwind end of the runway where the aircraft taking off would be clear of the ground when they came by me. I struck up a conversation with the older man next to me, who had come specifically to see the B-17s. He had flown B-17s during the war. While the various smaller aircraft were taking off, he told me of the freezing days high over Europe, how he hated the flak much more than the German fighters because you never could see the flak coming or shoot back at it, and many other things. He enjoyed watching the various World War II aircraft take off for the show, and commented to me on aspects of them that were not the way he remembered them.

He watched the first two B-17s take off in front of us with evident satisfaction. The pilot of the third airplane, named Sentimental Journey, evidently felt a need to catch up with the others to get in formation, and turned tight toward the crowd as soon as it cleared the ground. It seemed to pivot around us on its wingtip as it roared over, and for a moment there seemed to be nothing but its great silver flank filling the sky, while the air vibrated to the pounding of its engines. Then it was gone, rumbling off behind us to join its fellows. After a moment, the people in the crowd whooped and hollered to each other about what had happened. I turned to get my new friend's reaction. But he had none; in fact, he clearly was no longer with me at all. He was in the cold sky over Germany, or on a base in England somewhere with friends long since gone. It was several minutes before he spoke again. When he did he was quieter, and appeared a little shaken. Something had happened to him that he did not expect. He came to see some old airplanes, not to be blown 40 years into the past, to a place and time almost forgotten. He was not prepared to be mugged by ghosts.

I had squeezed off one frame with my lens at 75mm before the bomber overfilled my viewfinder. I was shooting Tri-X, and later discovered that I had forgotten to reset the meter's ISO rating from the 100 speed slide film I had been shooting earlier, so the roll was 2 stops overexposed. I spent many hours in the darkroom with this image. I found that although I could pull an almost normal image out of it with patience, I preferred the high-key version that the negative had captured. It was published in my high school yearbook a year or two later. For a while it became my letterhead image, because of the useful way it can float on a white piece of paper without borders. Although it does not look as good in digital, I find that I keep returning to the image. I feel that I watched something important happen to someone while this picture was taken, something that probably never happened to him again, and I feel that it is important that I remember it too.

In light of {this Philosophy thread about nostalgia}, my question is, is there any nostalgia going on here? Personally, I think not. From what my friend that day had told me of his wartime experiences, his feelings about them were not wistful or longing. He was more than glad that they were over. The war was important to him but he had no desire to go back. As for myself, I cannot feel nostalgic about a time and place in which I never lived; and examining my feelings for the day I took this picture, they are not ones of nostalgia so much as a recognition that on that day I learned something important about the effect that war and old machines can have on people.

Anyway, comments are welcome about any aspect of the picture but I would especially like for the crowd that regularly exchanges comments on airplane pictures to review the nostalgia thread and express your thoughts.

while it does bring some nostalgia (however recent) of my ride in a B17, it does not, im sure, evoke the same feeling of nostalgia that it would in someone that was as closely associated with the plane(s) and the war(s) as the man in your story was. For me, it is still more of an airplane image.

I can appreciate that a photo of this kind of subject may invoke nostalgic feelings in someone, especially when they've not been exposed to other similar photo's or images in a while.

 

This particular shot has the look of a pencil sketch, which may enhance the nostalgic qualities in some (perhaps members of aircrew had sketchbooks?). Just a thought.

 

Regards,

Alex

I browse your photos regularly when I look around on Photo.net. I've looked at this picture many times, enjoyed it, but put off reading the story... until just now.

 

I must say, you took me to the moment you shared with your friend and I thank you for sharing it with us. This photo and the story will stay with me for a very long time.

 

Does this photo evoke a feeling of nostalgia? For the most part, no. Not for me.

 

Strictly speakling I don't think you can feel nostalgic if you weren't there, but you certainly can have feelings for those that were, and the old WWII planes brings that out.

 

It would be difficult not to be extremely empathetic to your friend as he watched those B-17s fly away, and easy to try to imagine how I would have felt and reacted had I been a part of a B-17 crew. Looking at a B-17 brings out empathy for all the vets, particularly airmen, even if there is no one standing next to you.

 

But to tell the truth, when I see one of those old airplanes in person or in a good photo, it puts a smile on my face. I just love 'em. I love the way they sound, how they look taking off, flying, landing and taxiing.

 

For me, looking at these old birds is not nostalgic, it's enjoyment. Just happy to be looking at a magnificent old airplane.

 

Always a fan,

Curt

 

Curt, thanks for the nice thoughts. I'm a frequent visitor to your portfolio as well.

 

You bring up an interesting dialectic that we face in experiencing and shooting these old airplanes. One one hand, we can isolate them from their history and purpose, forget that they are weapons and suspend whatever feelings, positive and negative, we have about the events of which they were part, and appreciate them as beautiful objects. Some would question the appropriateness of this, yet photographers do it all the time with other subjects. We shoot pictures of beautiful women without asking if our models just broke up with their boyfriends, have committed crimes, are bulimic or are being exploited by a human meat market. It seems to me that we have the license to do the same with beautiful airplanes, if we choose. And even that in so doing, we may find a kind of truth that is overlooked in the fully realized picture.

 

But then again, we can bring in that history and purpose -- as much or as little as we choose. By "as little" I mean that, without opening the whole Pandora's Box of honor and glory and carnage and slaughter, we can focus just on the age of the machines, how they appear in our world as things out of place and time, things that have no business existing now, and especially still struggling into the air. Or we can open more of the box as I do with this picture and the little story tacked onto it, and use the photo to connect with times and events rapidly disappearing from the memory of living humans but which many of us feel, for many reasons, must not be forgotten.

 

I have a fairly definite view of where every airplane photo I have taken fits along this continuum. There should be a balanced range of them, I think, in any good collection of vintage airplane images. If, that is, the photographer puts any thought into his work beyond taking pretty pictures of airplanes.

 

You're right -- we do choose how much backstory we bring in. We have the option of simply enjoying the moment, maybe just paying that little personal tribute I'm sure you're familiar with, or as your story forces us to do, really think about what these airplanes represent.

 

That said, I would never want to get to the point where I only see these planes as the magnificent pieces of machinery they are, or merely as antiques. At a minimum, on some level, the personal tribute is always there.

 

Vintage non-combat airplanes get the tribute too. I'm compelled to think about what those early pioneers faced without charts, radios, or reliable airplanes.

 

Why airplanes do this more than other historical objects I do not know.

 

Curt