Photo London Highlights: The Nostalgia-Driven Fashion Photography of Today

On Saturday 17 May, the third day of this year's Photo London hosted at Somerset House saw Charlotte Jansen present the panel talk Fashion Photography and Nostalgia, moderated by Rosalind Jana. Those on the panel consisted of three interdisciplinary artists for whom fashion and nostalgia play a key role in their creative work, though manifesting in very different ways. This feels particularly pertinent now – a time where vintage everything is in style, obsessions with pre-internet subcultures is rife, and looking to the future has fallen out of fashion. A key takeaway from the panel talk came from Central Saint Martins graduate and Dior Art of Colour Photo Award recipient Rachel Fleminger Hudson: ‘We live in this time where time and repetition has been totally confused and fragmented because of the internet, and so inherently we are living in this time of highly complex and confusing nostalgia.’ she told the audience.

‘I think it was Tracey Emin that said one of the most beautiful things about being an artist is getting to hold hands with history, but I also you know don’t want to hold the hands too tightly with any time historically’ said Rosie Emerson, whose work melds photography, printing methods such as cyanotypes and monoprints, and unconventional materials to create ethereal baroque and pre-raphelite inspired works. Though her reference points are rooted in history, she made it clear that to hold hands ‘with the here and now’ is her primary goal, ‘we are the mirror to society’, she added during the discussion. On the contrary, the French artist Michelle Marshall discussed her self-reflective photographic practice, which is concerned with personal nostalgia. If we were to hold a mirror to society now, what would we see? Uncertainty in this rapidly technologically evolving world? Unease at the regressive politics at the top of government? We live in a time where the future is unpredictable, and so it’s no wonder we’re more content looking back.

It was a discussion with Rachel Fleminger Hudson — who with host Rosalind Jana really led the conversation — which was most stimulating on the topic of fashion and nostalgia. The artist is 1970s obsessed, permeating every facet of her practice – costume, set design, research, photography and film-making. She employs a flattening of the 70s time period as a jumping off point to explore ideas relevant to experiences of today, with sharp attention to academia, the theories of modernism and post-modernism in particular.

Unlike her contemporaries on the panel, Fleminger Hudson treats her internet-formed nostalgia for the 1970s to explore gazes, gender identities, performance, consumerism and more. ‘Since I’ve developed as an artist I understand my work as being relational with nostalgia, but it's a part that it formed on the internet and through internet archives, and I think that was a hugely shocking thing for me to realise’ she noted. While studying at Central Saint Martins on the Fashion Communication: Promotion pathway, ‘I genuinely thought that I was living in the past in my head.’ Fleminger Hudson’s self-aware, imagined and research based nostalgia, unique to the time we live in today, goes to show that nostalgia in fashion image making can, if used well, offer a fresh and contemporary lens with which to interpret the world now.

Fashion Photography and Nostalgia was just one of a plethora of stimulating panel discussions put on by Photo London this year – inviting audiences to take part in contemporary photographic discourse.