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Selfportraits (Patreon)

Published:
2026-01-13 16:00:08
Edited:
2026-04-23 15:04:06
Imported:
2026-10

Content

Lately I’ve been thinking about nostalgia.

Not about my work as a photographer - just in general. Old photos. Old films. Pictures of myself from a year ago, ten years ago, or when I was five.

For a long time, nostalgia felt harmless. Just warm memories. Something pleasant. Almost decorative. But it’s not that neutral. When we keep coming back to old photos or old movies, it’s not only because they’re beautiful or familiar. Very often, they hold something we’re missing now. A feeling. A pace. A version of ourselves. A certain way of being alive. Nostalgia isn’t only about the past. It’s often a quiet signal about the present.

And recently I realized something else.

I have the same feeling when I look at my own old photographs. For years, I called it inspiration. I thought I was inspired by my past work. By the images themselves. But it turns out, it’s also nostalgia. Nostalgia for that specific state I was in while shooting. For who I was back then. Not only during the shoot itself, but in that chapter of my life. Where I was living. How I was moving through the world. What I was feeling, wanting, allowing myself. The photographs just carry that state inside them.

So now I’m asking myself different questions. Not “why don’t I shoot like this anymore?” But “what exactly am I longing for when I look at these images?”

And I’m curious about you.

When you feel nostalgic looking at old photos or watching old films - have you ever asked yourself what you’re really missing? What is it that your present life doesn’t give you enough of right now?

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Comments

Sendrock

Humans have an incredible ability to project “better times” into the past. You see this with people talking about “the good old days” or the “golden age” etc. and this phenomenon has been deeply studied by psychologists and historians and what’s interesting is that people seem to agree it’s basically a lie. Luckily for us, aside from a few key negative or traumatic experiences in our past, our mind is more geared to “remember” the good things from the past and hold onto those positive emotions in a much stronger way than the bad or painful ones. This mostly comes down to the pleasure chemicals we receive when experiencing such good moments. So our minds continually rewrite our past as an edit, kind of like a somewhat coherent highlights reel and then it uses that to try and get what it really wants in the present: drugs. Those feel-good chemicals are what the mind is generally optimizing for and it uses nostalgia as a way to create them. In reality, we may have only had one good day a week or good week a month or good month a year back then, and those good albeit potentially infrequent times is what our mind will fixate on when we drift into thoughts of the past. This is at the root of escapism. I believe that using nostalgia carefully is a sweet life hack that can deliver some inspiration and briefly tweak brain chemistry, but also that mostly it’s a trap. And though the past actually was no better than the present, it often portrays itself as such because those pleasure chemicals are addictive and we WANT THEM NOW 😂 But I do think it’s nice to use such fantasies of the past as a way to dream more intentional and pleasant futures into existence, as long as we recognize them for what they are (fantasies) and not get stuck in the rut of believing that what we remember is an accurate account. From this balanced place, we are free to use the energy and emotions found in longing and consciously work towards the best life now and into the future!