‘Yesterday Once More’

This article examines the affordances of reflective nostalgia as a position adopted within illustration practice, using the author’s film project as a case study. Drawing upon the work of Svetlana Boym and other nostalgia scholars alongside an assortment of sources concerned with photography, new media, psychology and heritage discourse, the article explores how reflective nostalgia informs practical decisions that illustrators can make to employ nostalgic imagery critically and ethically. The visual strategies examined include structure, remediation and layering, and the different media available to the illustrator seeking to conjure ‘wistfulness’ through incorporating ‘pastness’ in nostalgic images. The article proposes that these visual strategies enable the illustrator to maintain temporal and critical distance from their subject matter, a position akin to the ‘presentism’ often criticized in historical scholarship. The discussion proposes that this is a responsible approach to the past, enabling illustrators to treat nostalgia as a powerful rhetorical tool that accommodates emotional heft at the same time as critical distance and ethical engagement with some of the less savoury aspects of the past. The practical project examined is used to open a conversation about the progressive potential of reflective nostalgia, and propose a more nuanced understanding of it in illustration and in relation to contemporary discussions of heritage.