Nostalgia — Blog — Healy Chen

Let things end

Word on the streets is Taylor Swift has purchased the masters of her first six studio albums. This then creates one conundrum: how does it reconcile with the albums she re-released (Taylor’s Version) back when she didn’t have the rights? I just want to know which is the one true Enchanted!

I guess it’s now safe to say that the original recordings were way better than the Taylor’s Versions. She is not the same person when she first recorded those songs! The emotions, inflections, and feelings are completely different. Cause when you’re fifteen, it’s difficult to rediscovers those feelings when Taylor is well into her 30s. I’m sure she understands this, too. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have spent the surely enormous sum to buy back the masters.

People are so fond of nostalgia because they can’t let a good thing end. They look back at past events with tinted glasses, wishing for a present that would replicate those feelings. I think that’s why remakes and reunions are so popular. Stars Wars couldn’t end with just the original six episodes. We got sad when Top Gear/The Grand Tour came to an end because we wish for the good stuff to simply last forever. The finality of everything is too difficult to bear.

But finality is all there is. We are born, and we will die. Instead of wishing for things to continue on, be happy that it happened at all. Cherish what is already there, instead of pining for what might have been. Kpop sensation NewJeans - currently mired in legal battle with their management company - doesn’t have to come out with another song for the them to be legendary. What the group has given to the world already in three short years is enough sweetness to last a lifetime.

Things end. It’s quite okay. It’s going to be okay.

Not of this reality

It seems what’s popular these days amongst millennials and Gen Z is buying old iPhones to take pictures. I guess these folks don’t want the latest and greatest in imaging technology that Apple has to offer? An iPhone 7 offers a comparatively nostalgic look in its photo processing, yet still has enough megapixels to do prints. (I remember it was around the iPhone 7 era that I was able to use photos taken with the phone in making calendar-sized prints.) I often see on social media people carrying two phones: an older iPhone strictly for photography, and a modern one for everything else.

I can understand why. Honestly, I am not a fan of how the modern iPhone processes its photos. It’s too sharp, too crunchy, too much HDR. Computational photography deserves kudos for what it can do with such a small camera sensor in smartphones, but at some point it gets to be a bit too processed, a bit too perfect. A photograph’s job is to be evocative, to elicit an emotional reaction. A direct technical copy of how a scene is in real life is not a requirement. A black-and-white picture taken from the real world of color is a great example of this notion.

It seems nostalgia and retro-ness always have a place. What was once old becomes new again. Just look at the return of bell-bottoms and baggy pants (that was the fashion of my high school days). We all think a decade ago were better times: we were objectively younger, with less ingrained responsibilities. The photographs from that time have a certain look, which explains why people are buying older phones (and cameras) to replicate that feel.

The instant film - be it Polaroid or FujiFilm Instax - will never go out of style, even though smartphones have surpassed it in technical image quality a long time ago. It’s the look that people want: a feel that isn’t of this reality, because our reality it too burdensome to bear. That’s how instagram came to its immense popularity, isn’t it? Nostalgic filters to make a photo look not of this present. I too have rose-tinted fondness for the early days of instagram.