Nostalgia, part 1 : Lonely Days
A few years ago, I found a forgotten film roll in my late grand-father's camera. It took me weeks to find a lab able to process the film. It was a Kodachrome II film dating from the 70s. Then I was told that it could take months before the film could be processed, as the lab needed to receive a susbstantial number of this type of films before processing them. It took years. I had almost forgotten about it till I received the slides. They were very...
more »Nostalgia, part 1 : Lonely Days
A few years ago, I found a forgotten film roll in my late grand-father's camera. It took me weeks to find a lab able to process the film. It was a Kodachrome II film dating from the 70s. Then I was told that it could take months before the film could be processed, as the lab needed to receive a susbstantial number of this type of films before processing them. It took years. I had almost forgotten about it till I received the slides. They were very damaged but I could still recognise me in the photos, aged 5 or 6. My grand-father shot them on a sunny day at the holiday house in Normandy where I used to spend most of the Summer.
I have always been fascinated by old pictures, by the memory they manage to fix, freeze in time, then suddlenly bring back to their viewers. They can be very emotional little things. Beyond the stills, images revive chapters of our lifes. With my grand-father's photos, I decided to do something. The idea of superimposing them to pictures of the same places now came naturally. Time had passed but the feelings and the emotions were the same : a mix of sadness, nostalgia and loneliness. Feelings which, each Summer, during the same repetitive family holidays, still oppress me. They are fixed on this series of images which could be superimposed a little bit more each year till they become unreadable, incomprehensible and unwatchable. Till we finally become free from them and from this addictive nostalgia.
By working on and with these images, I realised how much nostalgia takes a major place in my work and how much images are able to bring back to life forgotten emotions and sensations thought to be lost forever. Fighting against time is a losing battle but intimate images, cherished and looked at over and over again are for me small victories against passing time. I can only hope they evoke the same to you.
Elisabeth Blanchet
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