During today’s lecture, we looked into Hauntology and Nostalgia which we continued in our seminar to shadow the practice of photography. The feeling of nostalgia is a sentiment for the past, typically remembering a time that seemed happier than the present. Thinking about how this is used in the mainstream media, we see far-right politics using this feeling feeding propaganda. Trump’s mosts famous say “Let’s make America great again” and right politics in Britain fueling the idea that we were better off in a time when we were no part of the European Union. These ideologies encourage backwards thinking of a time in the past and don’t focus on building a better future in modern and non-capitalistic manner. This is an example of how nostalgia can be a dangerous sentiment when being distributed from the media with superficial intentions.
“... nostalgia goes beyond individual phycology. At first glance, nostalgia is a longing for a place, but actually, it is yearning for a different time- the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams. In the broader sense, nostalgia is a rebellion against the modern idea of time, the time of history and progress. The nostalgic desires to obliterate history and turn it into private or collective mythology, to revisit time like space, refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition…”
-Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia
I can connect with this quote on a personal level. I quite often find myself feeling nostalgic about the times in my life which were slower, more peaceful and times that connects me with the things that are important in life. “Nostalgia is a rebellion against the modern idea of time, the time of history and progress.” This stays with me, we live in a time where everything happens at a fast pace and we don’t take enough time to slow down and realise the importance of doing nothing. This is also an idea that I have been visually inquiring in my photographic work at the moment where I am exploring the importance of silence.
Hauntology was coined by French philosopher Jacques Derrida as it sounds like the french word “ontology” which is the study of being, existence and reality. The concept refers to the return or persistence of an element from the past. We see this in many ways through different media. Returning fashion trends from the past, retro technology, restoring old vehicles, working with traditional practices. The term “retro” which we began to use in the 70s see’s people returning to once used styles in fashion, music and film and is a popular term used in the present to describe styles from the past. Hauntology is the physical objects and nostalgia is the feeling that we gather when we are using these retro styles.
Thinking about how these two ideas my first line of thought comes to the trending Instagram hashtag #filmisnotdead.
This is a trend that is returning after the hype of digital is slowly dying down and fine art photographers are returning to make work on the film. For me, I learnt photography with a digital camera and for a long time, I did not even consider shooting film. However, recently I have started to integrate film into my projects and I absolutely love it. You are apart of the photo making process from the moment you load the film into the camera, all the way through developing and scanning or printmaking. Since beginning to learn this process I have felt a lot closer to the process of making a photograph. You achieve photographs on film that you just cannot achieve with a digital camera. The analogue process might not be as quick and easy as shooting on digital, but I am slowly finding greater satisfaction with the photographs that I am taking.
Here is a selection of photographs that I have recently made. This was the first time that I have colour processing ago. I would like to develop these skills further and use them for my personal projects.
