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Friday, May 14, 2004

coloured past

In our mind's eye, much of the past exists in black and white...

Poverty's Palette A striking slideshow of photos of Depression era America - in colour.
(via life in the present)

If colour helps to break the black and white otherness of the past, this article against Nostalgia is also confronting for a retrophile. It includes this quote from Dennis Potter:

Nostalgia is a second-order emotion. A nostalgiac looks at the past and keeps it there - 'Oh those dear dead days.' Which is what is dangerous about nostalgia. And what makes it a very English disease. I use the immediate past to intrude upon the present. If you don't have an alert awareness of the past, then what you're actually doing is being complicit with the orthodoxy of the present - totally."

(via follow me here)


Comments: coloured past

I'm nostalgic for the days when people left nostalgia alone. It's my favorite disease.
Posted by Mark at May 14, 2004 08:50 PM

Excellent photos.
Have you seen the Prokudin-Gorskii colour photos from Tsarist Russia?
Posted by James Russell at May 14, 2004 09:32 PM

Yes I did. Rather grand.
Same effect of challenging the B&W sense of 'history.
There was a slight sense there though of "colourisation" diminishing/filtering the veracity?
Posted by boynton at May 15, 2004 06:50 PM

- and Mark, I forgot to reply, but yes it's definitely one of my favourite diseases too.
Posted by boynton at May 16, 2004 10:27 AM

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