(nostalgia)

Before Hollis Frampton became known as a filmmaker of the New American Cinema, he was mainly involved with photography. In (nostalgia), he presents 11 of his photos, taken between 1958 and 1966, plus one by an unknown photographer. The photos depict friends in the New York art world, moldy spaghetti, two toilets imitating a crucifixion. He reminisces about all 12 of them. After about a minute, when the narration stops, the photos catch fire one by one and burn to ashes. By filming the charred remains, Frampton in a sense recreates them.

The voice-over and images are out of sync: each story belongs to the photo that follows, not to the one we are looking at. As a viewer, you navigate between the photo you expect to see and the story accompanying the previous one. Frampton’s black-and-white film, part of a larger work titled Hapax Legomena, is a dual experience of time in which memory and anticipation merge.