DARIN HAYTON

Tag: Photography as Nostalgia

  • Nostalgia and Photographs

    Nostalgia and Photographs

    I recently returned to the Park (the proper name is the Arcadia Community Regional Park, but to the hoards of us who marauded around it as kids, it was just the Park) where I spent so much of my pre- and early-teen childhood. Especially those long summer days. The sun, seemingly stuck in the sky somewhere just past noon, burning down with particular intensity, baking the metal merry-go-round and the rocket ship to a skin-searing million degrees, or so we claimed. The sand offered little relief from the temperature and no cushion from a fall. When we could no longer endure the heat, we would wander over to the pool and try not to get yelled at for doing flips off the diving board. In those eternal afternoons everything seemed harsh and faded in the blazing sun. Today I still see the Park as desaturated and overexposed.

    The Lawn Bowling greens were never very popular.

    Wandering through the park I was immediately drawn to the Lawn Bowling greens. As kids we would hop the chainlink fence, which at three feet was surely more aesthetic than functional, and run around on the manicured grass until some worker would chase us out yelling something about ruining the lawns. Why, we thought, do the old people get the nice lawns and shaded benches while we have to put up with blazing hot, rough sand? Lawn bowling continues, apparently, to be something of a niche pastime.

    Wasted many summer afternoons at this pool.

    The pool was a mixed bag. It offered some respite from the heat, but you couldn’t chase each other around it (no running allowed, the sign said and the lifeguard enforced), you weren’t supposed to do flips off the diving boards (another rule announced by a sign and enforced by a lifeguard), and it seemed always to be crowded with moms and their little kids.

    Wandering through the Park I couldn’t help but recall those summer days and to lament the loss not of innocence but of the rocket ship, the merry-go-round, and the sand. I also couldn’t help but see the Park in overexposed and desaturated scenes. None of the photos I took that day looked quite right — the colors too vivid; the light too soft. For me, the Park will always be vaguely overexposed and desaturated. Nostalgia seems to be what I photographed that day.

  • Preservation, Nostalgia, Loss

    Preservation, Nostalgia, Loss

    Photography seems always to imagine a different world. Photographers don’t record the reality they see, they consecrate a reality they wish to see. In this way, photographs are always about a world that no longer exists. The lure of dilapidated buildings, of abandoned places, and of weed-choked roads testify to the photographer’s urge to record and celebrate lost scenes. Photography teeters between preservation and nostalgia.

    Looking up toward Chantry Flats.

    It is difficult to preserve without the taint of nostalgia, as is the case now as I look over some photographs taken before the Bobcat Fire devastated so much of the San Gabriel mountains and Santa Anita Canyon. Loss and destruction had always lurked along the trail up Santa Anita Canyon in the remnants of previous structures scattered through the trees.

    Stairs recall a former structure.

    But now the various photographs intended, for the most part, to preserve what I saw as I hiked up the canyon have become a poignant reminder of how much more we have already lost. These photos are also a warning for what will likely be lost when the mud and debris slides down into the canyon and chokes the creek.

    A small waterfall along Santa Anita Creek, just above Sturtevant Falls.
    Santa Anita Creek tumbles over some rocks just below Spruce Grove campground.

    Along with the mud and debris will come the dead trees. Many will fall, blocking the trail and clogging the creek. Others will never leaf out again. Their canopy of leaves that shades the trail through the canyon has certainly been lost.

    The canopy had not yet leafed out this cool grey March afternoon.

    And then there are the camps, Spruce Grove Campground and Sturtevant Camp. Whether or not they have been destroyed, they are closed for the foreseeable future, as is the trail leading to them.

    A chair waits patiently for an occupant on the badminton court at Sturtevant Camp.
    Nobody was around to ring the dinner bell that Tuesday afternoon.

    Now, in light of the recent fires, these photographs do more than just preserve moments. They evoke a powerful nostalgia, reminding me not only of the hike that produced these images but also all the hikes over the years as friends and I squandered our youth in these mountains.