The Nature of Irrevocability: Anthropocene Nostalgia in Hayley Eichenbaum’s Photography Series The Mother Road

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.11

Keywords:

Anthropocene, temporality, Hayley Eichenbaum, Route 66, nostalgia, kitsch

Abstract

The recent acknowledgement of the Anthropocene, resulting from the increasingly visible human-induced effects on the biosphere, has ultimately obliterated the nature/culture division (Latour; Chakrabarty), prompting sociocultural changes (Autin). Hayley Eichenbaum’s photography series The Mother Road (2015–19) serves as a prominent example of a contemporary American cultural text which reinterprets existing aesthetic strategies and shows symptoms of what I propose to identify as Anthropocene nostalgia. This new sentiment is characterized by the awareness that a return to the past is impossible and would be pernicious, given the detrimental effects of reckless capitalism fuelled by twentieth-century American consumer culture. This article aims to analyze this distinctive type of nostalgia and its juxtaposition with the Anthropocene in Eichenbaum’s series. An analysis of The Mother Road identifies why and how this new sentiment corresponds with the aesthetics of previous decades, as well as notions of temporality and time. Building on previously conceptualized traditions as codes of reference, Eichenbaum reinterprets the representation of Route 66 by playing with its iconography, creating images which evoke desolate, quasi-post-apocalyptic landscapes. With the use of synthetic colours, digital manipulation, kitsch imagery, and mindful deconstruction of past aesthetic strategies, the analyzed series demythologizes the past and displays the loss of both nature itself and of pre-Anthropocene perception.

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Author Biography

Alicja Relidzyńska, University of Warsaw

Alicja Relidzyńska is a PhD Candidate and a Teaching Associate at the American Studies Center of the University of Warsaw. She is working on her dissertation about new forms of twenty-first-century nostalgia. Her research interests include visual studies with an emphasis on film, photography, and popular culture, as well as cultural responses to social and environmental changes.

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Published

2022-11-24

How to Cite

Relidzyńska, A. (2022). The Nature of Irrevocability: Anthropocene Nostalgia in Hayley Eichenbaum’s Photography Series The Mother Road. Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, (12), 172–191. https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.11