Photoworks 18

Futures Past: History, Memory and Nostalgia

When Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection in January this year much of the ensuing news coverage saw Twitter feeds and Facebook groups jar against specialists wheeled out to mourn the passing of an analogue icon. Could this coverage be taken as representative of wider tensions shaping various areas of current cultural production? As the ghosts of an analogue past come to haunt a digital present, forms of nostalgia loom large in some quarters, while the optimistic claims made for new technologies are subject to increasing scrutiny.

Issue 18 examines these issues in relation to a wide variety of practices. Stretching from art photography to mobile phone apps, museums to social networking sites.

Photoworks Members can read articles from Photoworks Issue 18 online by following the links below:

• Documentary’s Future’s Past: Jorge Ribalta in Conversation with Stephanie Schwartz, by Stephanie Schwartz
• Adam Curtis: Dystopian Dialectics, by Stephen Duncombe
• Doug Ashford: Six Moments in 1967, by Claire Grace
• The Real Thing, by Robert Rowland-Smith
• Get Back To Where You Once Belonged, by Marvin Heiferman 
• Digital Photography Never Looked So Analogue, by Stephen Bull