Analogue Nostalgias: Why Residual Media is Still Relevant in a Digital World
My dissertation explores the connection between the theory of nostalgia and the revival of analogue photography in the present day. I have focused on researching the meaning of the term ‘nostalgia’, especially when used in the modern day. Scholars such as Janelle L. Wilson and Katharina Niemeyer have aided me in both seeking the evolving definition of nostalgia and connecting nostalgia with analogue photograpy. I have particularly looked at film photography when researching the resurgence of analogue photography as a practice.
Furthermore, I have looked at Lomography, an online community that enables avid film photographers to have a space in which they can upload their experimentations that have been shot on film. Through Lomography I am able to extract statements from interviews with photographers who opt to shoot on film, as well as being able to analyse and compare photographs from both the mid-20th and the 21st centuries.
A prominent theme in my research is the comparison between analogue photography and its digital counterparts, how images captured on film evoke a different reaction to those shot digitally. Moreover, with smartphones, photo filter apps such as Huji are able to replicate the aesthetics of a film-processed image digitally and so there becomes a fusion between the analogue and the digital. I question whether, in this idea of digital replicating the analogue, they are not completely opposite forms of photography, as digital seeks to produce what its predecessor was designed to do. My dissertation seeks to analyse nostalgia within analogue photography and compare it with the outcome of digitally aged images.
