March 5, 2012
Nostalgic Mondays are good for you.
Every few Mondays I go back in my own archives for inspiration. Certainly inspiration is all around us, in many forms, but I have to say (especially as a photographer) there is something so satisfying about looking back at an old photo, soaking it in, and really feeling (all over again) what it was like to be there. Good or bad moment. Bad, or good. Sometimes the moment might not be so nostalgic as it is regretful or even remorseful. Thankfully, though, time has passed. Things have changed. You’ve learned something, right? You likely documented a time you knew you’d be getting something from.
Let’s put it this way: Isn’t that what all this picture taking is about? To help us remember? Good or bad. Bad, or good. We put a little post it note on that moment with an image on it that says: wake up you!
Nostalgic Mondays are good for you. I encourage you to look at the images you sent to your friends at this same time last year from your phone, or posted on Facebook, or emailed. Please do more than simply send them off into cyberspace, never to consider them again. You should go back. You should look. It might just make you feel a whole lot better about your day, whatever B.S. happened last month or where you’re going in the next year.
This article in Dazed Digital about the new work of the totally jovial, satiric and insightful pop culture artist Takashi Murakami inspired me to look back at an image I documented of him and chef Michael Wilson at Wilson Restaurant, Culver City, CA (during the night of Murakami’s 2008 opening for Blum and Poe gallery whom I was documenting for).
Thanks for the memories gentlemen! Now maybe next week I can look at an image that I’m not as thrilled with but which will spur me on just the same.
Yours in nostalgia,
Amy
Chef Michael Wilson of Wilson Restaurant, and artist Takashi Murakami
Murakami's 2012 work
Amy Tierney / Thrive Images 