Nostalgia in black and white: photography and the geographies of memory

Abstract

ABSTRACT In a world of colour, monochrome images break through the monotony of visual saturation, creating a sense of nostalgia in the present. As an aesthetic rooted in the past, black and white photography when applied to the present lends an authority to images by visually coding them as archival. Drawing on photographs taken by young people as part of a broader research project, this short article will explore the tendency of monochrome to elicit geographies of memory by charging them with productive nostalgia. The study, called Engaging Youth in Regional Australia and partly undertaken in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, sought to better understand the connections that regional Australian youth have with their hometowns, and, in turn, how this relates to their decisions to stay, leave, or return to a regional area. Although not explicitly asked to do so, some of these young people responded to the use of black and white film by connecting place to childhood memory. This short article considers the implications of this tendency for art as research in human geography.