Nostalgia
“Unfold your today beyond your yesterday, or else, there'll be no tomorrow, only decay.”
Abhijit Naskar
We are so excited to grow up and experience the real world but soon realize the real world is not as picture perfect or carefree as we thought. We then tend to reminisce about the “good times.” Time doesn’t stop for anyone. The poor, rich, happy or sad. But the memories can remain. Some may call it depression or anxiety but I’ll refer to it as nostalgia. These photographs don’t exactly portray what memories I have experienced but a generalized concept that I feel would resonate with the viewer.
I use these images to tell a story about a woman who is clinging onto her memories/past. These images show her going throughout her day with her nostalgia. As you view the images, you will see 2 different images stacked on top of each other (double exposure). Continuing down the line, you will notice that the hazy background image starts to become more clear. Her reality looks very dull and lifeless compared to her memories. I used Gum Bichromate to illustrate her delusions. I wanted to show how beautiful they can be, but the more she focuses on her memories, the more they start to take a front seat in her life, and subsequently, her reality starts getting worse.
Her memories start to destroy her life. As she dissociates she loses touch with reality and in the end, they destroy her happiness. I had a time in my life when my present and future looked daunting. I would hold on to memories thinking I could keep them alive. But it does the opposite. The more I held on, the more my present lost its luster. This series shows how nostalgia has affected me.
Gum Bichromate is a 19th century printing process where a digital negative is printed onto light sensitive paper. Pigment color is brushed onto the light sensitive paper and then printed. This process is repeated several times until the desired color is established. These steps are repeated from 5-15 times. This is a multi layer image that renders a painterly effect.
