Idea Blog - Past Times (?)

While reading Svetlana Boym's The Future of Nostalgia I came to the realization of what really draws me to the abandoned houses that I photograph. Lauren asked me to include the fact that these houses have to be rural houses but I couldn't figure out why they had to be rural. After I had moved to Richmond to attend VCU my parents separated. Once they separated they sold the house that I grew up in. The house is a country farm house. This is the reason behind the houses that I photograph having to be rural.

"Like the scientists of the eighteenth century who proposed that posets and philosophers might be better equipped to analyze nostalgia, so some psychologists of the early twentieth century, including Freud, suggested that artists and writers have a better insight into the dream and dread of home. Reading the fantastic tales of E.T.A. Hoffman to understand the mysteries of the familiar, Freud examined multiple meanings of the word homey (heimlich) from "familiar", "friendly" and "intimate" to "secretive" and "allegorical." The word develops greater ambivalence until homey (heimlich) finally coincides with its opposite, the uncanny (unheimlich). We desire what we fear most, and the familiar often comes to us in disguise. Hence the gothic imagery of haunted houses and familiar Hollywood tales of the spooky suburbia, the ghostly other side of the American dream. At first glance, it appears that nostalgic, the lost home and the home abroad often appear haunted. Restorative nostalgics don't acknowledge the uncanny and terrifying aspects of what was once homey. Reflective nostalgics see everywhere the imperfect mirror images of home, and try to cohabit with doubles and ghosts."

(Boym, Svetlana. "On Diasporic Intimacy." The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic, 2001. 251. Print.)

Bibliography:

Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic, 2001. Print.