nostalgia

Searching for nostalgia within scenes today, whilst still technically providing a documentation of life today, presents a skewed reality of the twenty first century. In the same manner that Shore’s photos were not nostalgic at the time they were taken, but rather mundane seeming photos, the photos I look to take today are documents of how things really are. Now, the difficulty in that comes with overcoming the idea that the way things look today is bland and uninteresting; we must shift our perspective and the way we look at our surroundings. Today’s cars look distinctly contemporary and attempts to exclude these from a frame to preserve a potential nostalgic feeling can happen very quickly. This creative decision however now introduces a subjective opinion and the images is longer an untouched document of today. Car design, just like the design of everything else, will develop in the next decades, and will take us to a point where we look back and view design of the 21st century as nostalgic. The colours, patterns, design philosophies and the archetypal sleek look will trigger connections to memories, just in the same way Shore’s photos from the 70s do. Seeing photos from now will remind us of our childhood and adolescence, thus the importance of not skewing the images of today by falsifying  and chasing a vintage look. It’s almost a question of instant gratification; the falsified nostalgic image will give a sense of fulfilment at the time of taking the image which will surpass the feeling of an image which is faithful to the present-day. The clothes people wear, the design of laptops and phones, the layouts and design of common software, the average interiors and exteriors of houses, the trending haircuts, will all change in the next years, and the skill is to recognise that, see past the ordinariness and insignificance of these things and ‘observe the world with heightened awareness’, committing to the photo however regular it may seem at the time; if it possesses the qualities of a good image, there’s little reason to hold back; it’ll get the rest of its meaning through time. We never grew up with old Chevys on the roads or vintage movie posters , we grew up with ios16, nike dunk trends, shopping malls that look they way they do, airports full of Boeing 737s, pizza time, and one day those things will become just as dated as everything else, only that we understood wrong and thought good photos were ones that looked like they could’ve been taken 40 years ago. We’ll look back and say remember when archive pages were all over instagram? Remember everyone used to get skin fades and a lined up sharp fringe? We are so accustomed to the way things look now that our awareness doesn’t pick up the signs to take a photo, things don’t feel special enough. Only when we travel outside of our own bubble, where things start to look different, do our senses pick up interesting scenes or subjects. The aim is to no longer chase the idea of a nostalgic photo, but rather one that capture life just as it occurs right under our noses; the most truest representation. But for that we need to unlearn so much we have already learned, become children again in the way we see just as Picasso did with his paintings, this is the pinnacle of art yet it sounds so counterintuitive. We must unlearn in a sense what the instagram explore page has taught us about how a good and successful photo looks. As we pass through the years, the iPhone photo and video will become the visual to these decades, as distinct as it is, it will become what tape camcorders, polaroids and film are to the 80s and 90s. iPhone images will be the face of our generation and be looked back as nostalgic in its own right. It is the direct equivalent to these older cameras, the everyday consumer camera, which holds all our family and holiday photos as well as memories. The way the standard image looks in the next years will change, it will become truer to life, colour science will change and only at that point will the shift occur where the iPhone photo is no longer ordinary but rather represents a distinct period in time, we’ll all reminisce over. This, as of now is still concealed. The concept continues: we look back and there is a certain romanticism in old letters written and postcards; these will be replaced by text messages and most likely, that same romanticism will be translated into the newer medium so even these are worth the documenting in photos.