Fotograf Magazine

“The twentieth century began with utopia and ended with nostalgia,” wrote Svetlana Boym in the introduction to her essay “Nostalgia and Its Discontents”. This assertion can be read as a description of a loop, of cyclical time, ideologically distant from the established conceptions of linear development. If we take ourselves back to the blossoming of the automobile industry in the early 20^th century, at its peak later described using the term “Fordism”, we stand at the threshold of the mass production of a specific product, and what’s more, its availability to the general public – including the producers themselves: workers assembling individual components of a democratic means of transportation on moving lines. Despite the subsequent development of economic theories and manufacturing strategies, the term “Fordism” is still relevant in our present day. At the same time, however, through all the critical moments of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, we are fully aware of how the idealistic concepts of the time have failed across the entire political spectrum that defines our modern history. The vision of shiny new societies, whether based on socialism or liberalism, has crumbled before our eyes and we lack the wherewithal to reformulate it. So we go back to the starting point, and this is why we nostalgically look backwards seeking answers in that which has already been experienced and was not sustainable over the long-term….