Fall Back in Time Please!

Hello Beautiful People,

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cceid0WOhSl/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

This week was an inspiring way for me to reflect on this project as I was focusing on "Nostalgia and Documentation". I am aware that my project is a little nostalgic in itself where I write stories about the photos I take. I create the time and place that you can imagine being in the photos. However, my mission was to hit that theme on the nose with my story. 

The story I am telling in the post is during the fall of 2021. The person that is explaining their account of the day is a memory. Since the stress of life was weighing them down, the memory was something they reflected on. It expressed the feeling of the day itself with the weather, and how that impacted them. 

The sky with a jet stream, giving the person a calm feeling

I tried to express the process of remembering by describing the scene, and how the person felt. A time that they missed and felt clarity. This is what I tried creating with nostalgia. As Nathan Jurgenson explained in his book "The Social Photo", he talks about the history of the term "nostalgia". He claimed that "By the nineteenth century, though, the word had morphed from describing a physical to a psychological condition: it is no longer merely about the longing for a place but also a longing for a lost time, inaccessible except through evocative reminders" (27). I played with this definition by having the person refer to the present like "Even to this day..". With the way that I ended my post where the person is not sure what they felt, it makes them think back and wonder. The good feelings that come from the fall season and this specific time in particular. Or even the sight of a similar leaf would trigger this memory to come forth. 

The leaf that is referenced, the symbol

The leaf and any fall-related thing would bring the experience to the front of the mind. Maybe even some of you that are reading and observing my work has some connections with fall. Now that we are in the spring of 2022, some of the memories you have from autumn would be brought forth just by mentioning aspects of the season.

Not only does this post create nostalgia, but it strikes documentation as well. The documentation aspect is more clear to see as I talk about each photo in great detail. I talk about the photos as recounting the experience, and you would be able to imagine the scene as if you were there at this exact moment in time. Jurgenson talks about the documentary style in photography that captures the time it was taken. "Whether or not one is literally recording a moment, the effect of social photo conditions how one experiences the world, how one recognizes instances within it as significant or meaningful or funny or important or worthy" (28). This aspect is very important in this ongoing project that I am doing. When I take photos and write a story to go along with them, I feel like I am documenting the moment that they took place. I want the experience to be shared with y'all like you were there too!

It was fun to challenge myself and create a sense of nostalgia. Last week was more direct with what I wanted to be seen, so it was interesting to create something deeper. Even suspense. All will make sense in the end, but for now, all we can do is wait.

I hope you enjoyed this week's post and I will see y'all next time!

With lots of love,

Libby 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Framing Our World Through Different Lenses

Image
Hello Beautiful People, https://www.instagram.com/p/CcwtBAtO_er/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link This week was an interesting experiment and a little challenging. I wanted to play with some photography techniques to add to the story I wrote. I worked with framing and hierarchy to add focus in different ways. This story was about remembering times in my childhood and I used my little cousin as my subject. This is the first time I used a full body in any of my photos to show in the stories, and it was an interesting choice on my part. First, I played around with framing to see what I could get out of my photos. What I did was crop one of the photos so my little cousin took up most of the viewing space, with little background to surround him. As Lupton and Phillips wrote in their book "Graphic Design The New Basics", they discuss the reasoning behind cropping other than just cutting the picture. They claim that "by closing in on a detail, cropping can change the focus of a pict
Read more

A View into the Looking Glass Self

Image
Hello Beautiful People, https://www.instagram.com/p/CdUlRQSOEuI/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link This week is a wacky one to talk about. Let's jump into it! I was focusing on the looking glass self and how the 'selfie' is involved in social media. I took a different approach for this week as I felt it was a little more personal. A big difference with self-identifying photos is a 'self-portrait' is more about what you can gather about the person, from one photo. However, 'selfies' express the existence of the person, that's pretty much it. Of course, doing more for "selfies' can say a bit about the person but it is more of a mirror perspective.  I tried expressing the personal struggles I have with posting on social media, especially photos that show the person's looks. I played with the idea of creating the 'perfect' photo that is worthy of Instagram, and a photo that passes by in life. Both could be considered selfies but both have some
Read more

Grids and Patterns Galore!

Image
Hello Beautiful People, https://www.instagram.com/p/CdCle86Ow3q/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link This week's post is about modularity, grid, and pattern in my work! This was a fascinating journey to explore these fields from an artist's front. It was a little hard for me since I had to figure out how I was going to incorporate them into my stories. Usually, I would not focus on things like patterns in my work since I focus on them being visuals for my stories. While I do take care of the artist angle of my photos, I did not pay attention to specifics like the repetition of patterns or grids. However, this week it made me focus on it and I realized how it affected my work. My room's view of the side of Kohler  I dabbled with grid for one photo, which is the one depicted above. This one was difficult for me since I had no idea what I was going to do. I could not think of a way that I could use grid and have it be a part of my story. That was until I remembered what Lupton and Phi
Read more