My post on 22 April on Yuji Saiga's photography of an Gunkanjima has led to some interesting discussion between Kurt and I about the 'fetishization of nostalgia', so today I continue this thread visually by focusing on photographers who take their inspiration from nostalgia of the past.

The first of these is Jeff Brouws, who photographs roadside views of highway America. He comments on his own work:

[It got me] "thinking about the cultural ramifications of what I was looking at, i.e., the history that fostered roadside development as well as the myths American society tells itself about the road...As the final segments of the Interstate system fell into place, effectively choking off the last remnants of two-lane roadside culture across America, I felt the urgent need of the visual anthropologist to get it down on film. Each road trip became a hunt for the obscure and overlooked. I was seeking what I considered to be a more authentic experience of place and situation".

Another fan of roadside America iconography, Troy Paiva documents the abandoned roadside west at night. He also features some great shots of discarded aircraft bodies, and was interviewed about his work on POPcult.

Crossing the Frontier: Photographs of the Developing West, 1849 to the Present was an exhibition held in 1997 at the San Francisco MOMA which explored the ways in which 'the West' has been documented and idealised over the past 150 years. The website galleries feature more than fifty images from the exhibition and an interesting discussion thread on railscapes, photography and western nostalgia.

Nancy Martha West has written a book, Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia, on the evolution Kodak's advertisements and the way that shaped the development of personal snapshot photography by emphasising the importance of the preservation of personal memories. KodakGirl features images of female photographers, many published by Kodak in their advertising campaign of the same name, and also of women actively taking photographs.

My Amazon Wish List fairy godmother has been doing a little shopping for me on the sly - your presents have been MOST gratefully received! Thank you my friend, you know who you are ;-)