I like to photograph old things.  Never mind that the rocks of the earth in a landscape might be billions of years old. That just won't do.  The same rocks trimmed and expertly arranged on top of each other, now that's something!  Now, if those rocks appear to be falling down, the subject gets even more interesting.  It has to be something man-made. Something that is evocative of elements of culture from the past. If it is in a state of ruin, it speaks even louder.

            I was not sure there is a proper name for this malady. I used to call it nostalgia. However, nostalgia as I understood it, relates to things reminding you of experiences earlier in your own life.  If you are in the Baby Boomer generation that might be '57 Chevy's, pinball machines, juke boxes, or music from before the day the music died.  The ability of any of these cultural elements to evoke a feeling of nostalgia seemed to depend on whether you had personally interacted with them.  So, for example, someone who grew up in a different culture would not be expected to get nostalgic about the same things as someone who grew up in America.

            Well, my view of nostalgia took a major step closer to deeper understanding when I read this essay ("Nostalgia Reimagined") by Felip de Brigard . The writer is a professor at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University.  He describes how the scientific view of nostalgia has changed in recent years. Turns out that feelings of nostalgia can be elicited by an imagined past.  You do not need to have personally experienced the objects in their setting of place or time.  They are still capable of eliciting the bittersweet emotions of sadness and homesickness characteristic of nostalgia.  This re-imagining of nostalgia  has led to the proposal of a new name for this complex mental state.  Anemoia is defined as a sense of longing for a past you yourself have never lived.  This name was coined  and artfully explained in a poetic work by John Koenig, "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows"  Despite its literary origins, it is quite likely that this name will come into more common use as our understanding of nostalgia evolves.

            So, back to photography.  It turns out that my penchant for photographing the past not only has a scientific explanation but also a name!  I look forward to making many more photos evocative of anemoia with greater earnestness now that I finally have a deeper understanding of what it is that I am trying to convey.

In the meantime, have a look at my galleries Nostalgia, Abbeys and Sicily.