Does nostalgia serve an evolutionary purpose for us?
On photography's role in manufacturing one of our gnarliest emotions and my nostalgia's role in both keeping us from growing but also helping us live
Happy Sunday. First, thank you for continuing to join this parade of musings. Second, we’re going to jump into a fun topic and I want you to listen to this song and then remember it.
Today I have one of those explorations about a topic that is all-consuming and almost always on: Nostalgia.
When was the last time you felt nostalgic? What triggered it? What did it feel like for you? And was the nostalgia tied to something from long ago or distant, or something much more recent?
Nostalgia plays a very intimate role in my development as a photographer. I tried to think about how I’d distill my manifesto (which I don’t have) or artistic pursuits with photography, and I think I always come back to two main things:
1. capturing, through my unique eyes, authenticity in a person, place, or thing I feel an immediate connection to, in the short term and especially in the long term.
establishing a narrative bond that inflicts some sort of nostalgic feeling in both myself and the viewer, something that, for whatever reason, feels familiar or understood in a deep way
I want to capture images that make you feel something, particularly a connection built by a deep emotional trigger. But why nostalgia? Why not anger? Why not pure joy? Why not laughter? Why not straight depression through the eyeballs?
How do we define nostalgia?
Oxford Dictionary states:
a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.
From what I’ve read, most of our senses are nostalgia feeders; culprits in our time travel and clinginess to the past. You smell something and you’re teleported to a place that creates a sensation both distant and familiar. You see a photo and a story envelops you like a tornado stripping a barnhouse.
But it’s the affection for the past that really breaks my brain a bit because I’ve found myself longing for things that weren’t always likable, like being broke in the San Fernando Valley, not being friends with someone anymore, or years of angst over my future. It’s not affection but more of a yearning for nostalgia because I know it kickstarts some deeper form of curiosity for me. Nostalgia is never boring; it’s always revealing and engaging. Unlike joy, nostalgia can hang around for hours, even if the song, photo, or smell has passed. At least for me.
These ideas recently raised a question for me: if nostalgia is much more primal and inherent in us, does it serve some sort of purpose for survival? By remembering the past, is it something that helps us survive the present?
Nostalgia nerds are trying to figure it out
In 2013, a team of researchers set out to try and answer, exactly, what role nostalgia plays in our being and discovered something interesting.
Nostalgia has been shown to counteract loneliness, boredom and anxiety. It makes people more generous to strangers and more tolerant of outsiders. Couples feel closer and look happier when they’re sharing nostalgic memories. On cold days, or in cold rooms, people use nostalgia to literally feel warmer.
It’s cold. You contrive nostalgia. You feel warm. Your life gets better. In order to manage life’s everpresent challenges, nostalgia acts as a forcefield against agony.
How fast does nostalgia happen?
Remember that song above by Maggie Rodgers called “That’s Where I am?” It came out in 2022. I discovered it earlier this week from watching her Glastonbury Festival 2023 set. I’ve never heard her music before this week but it feels 100%-to-the-bone-fueling-chills nostalgic to me. It transports. It feels like I’ve been listening to it for years. It doesn’t make me happy, but it makes me feel exploratory.
A lot of times artists talk about building or creating something that elicits specific feelings. This isn’t a foreign concept. And I think I try and do the same with my photography. Did Maggie Rodgers intend to create something nostalgic?
Are we meant to create nostalgic moments? If so, will the yearning for the past help us move forward?
In that 2013 study, the lead researcher talks about feeding the memory bank. He makes a declaration to actually prepare nostalgic moments to make your life better. He calls this “anticipatory nostalgia”, and when I read that statement from this very old article, I almost fell out of my chair. It’s like finding a name for the thing that’s been bugging you for years, and finally some random stranger at a bar drinking espresso martinis drops a bombshell of knowledge. (But this was a NY Times article). The researcher went on to say:
“I don’t miss an opportunity to build nostalgic-to-be memories,” he says. “We call this anticipatory nostalgia and have even started a line of relevant research.”
That pseudo manifesto you read up top, where I talk about capturing authenticity in people, places, and things I feel a connection to? That’s feeding the memory bank for me. At my core, I love people and experiences. I cherish them for storytelling, for connection, and to build bonds that make it hard to break. Because life is always trying to break up our shit.
The deeper question here is what I’m saving for in my personal nostalgia bank. And I guess it’s what we all sort of fear in the context of our lives: not feeling alone, not feeling regret, not feeling like we missed out, and not feeling like we’re cold. But, you know, desolation cold.
I think every time I grab my camera, I’m anticipating capturing a moment that may save me from heartache: moving humans, smiles in the dead of winter, a man playing the saxophone near Skid Row.
But isn’t heartache part of feeling human? Is our investment in nostalgia a withdrawal from living, of the present, of the immediate consciousness? I hope not. I do love the feeling. Like the photo below, taken just a few days ago. This is like a gold brick in the nostalgia memory bank. But there’s already pain here because I know this innocence, this youth, won’t last forever. It’s the exploration of those feelings, the stories both past and future, that I think about. And maybe that’s what we all need to keep living.
For now, I’m going to keep harvesting and storing to feel warm whenever I want.
If you made it this far, I created a very short playlist of songs (my buddy Revaz is going to critique this so hard) that are my nostalgic repository – songs that are directly tied to deep memories of experiencing feelings vs what those feelings are. Enjoy and thanks for spending another Sunday morning with me.
Great read. Nostalgia is such a fascinating phenomenon. To me it is an essential part of who I am. I reminds me where I came from, what wonderful moments I experienced in life. We often tend to see the negative events in life, nostalgia always helps me to be reminded that there are so many great things that have happened to me.
Luis and I had a month-long conversation about nostalgia last September [https://www.thetwelveinquiries.com/p/tech-nostalgia-imprecise-yearnings] and one of the ideas that stayed with me is that part of the joy of nostalgia is re-experiencing an event or emotion or relationship but with the benefit of knowing how things turned out. It's like how when you already know how the movie is going to end, you can start to focus on other details that you didn't pay attention to the first time around.
Also, this was the playlist that I needed to download to my phone before today's 18-hour flight! I remember that I made you a podcast for a long drive through the Southwest when you were doing StoryCorps. I just looked for it, but couldn't find it. I did find another post from 2009 though when I mention that you and I wanted to see a St. Vincent concert in LA ("cutest indie rocker ever!" I wrote shortly before dating my future wife who has an eerie resemblance 😯.
I like reading you, homie.