INTERVIEW
Reflective nostalgia: Victorian pubs, Butlins postcards, and reworking archival imagery
Interview with Stephanie Black
All images in the article are provided by Stephanie Black
Referring to archival imagery can be a tricky task for illustrators. Rooted in cultural landscapes that are distant—whether spatially, temporally, or both—such imagery carries values and connotations that may resonate differently in the present. This distance is often used, and at times exploited, to evoke a wide range of responses: from nostalgic affection to deep feelings of belonging. In this piece, Stephanie Black reflects on how illustrators can navigate this distance thoughtfully and critically.
INTERVIEW
— Your recent paper discusses the notion of reflective nostalgia in relation to the images constructed around pubs. Could you tell a bit about the pubs you were looking into in your research?
— There was a whole range, but parts of pub culture are still missing from that picture. I visited quite a few ‘local’ pubs across the UK, which was interesting because I wouldn't necessarily have gone to many of those pubs before—I’m not from the local community, and there are questions of gender and class (and everything else) surrounding different types of pub. That led to some really valuable conversations with friends about the pubs different people find exclusionary, but that serve an important role in specific communities. These experiences made me think about how I represent pubs that aren’t the ‘sentimental typical’ type.
It made me think more about the social function of the pub, as well as what it looks like. Everyone wants to celebrate Victorian pubs, because they're beautiful, cosy and sparkly — but that's a constructed image too. I started to ask: how else can I visualise the term ‘pub’? Who do these spaces work for, and who do they exclude? This became particularly pressing due to the context I was working in, as the image of the pub was being used for political ends. The image of the charming ‘traditional’ wooden pub was being used to trigger a sense of restorative nostalgia. So as an illustrator I needed to consider who was using these triggers and to what end, and how I positioned the pub (and myself) against that backdrop.
It made me think more about the social function of the pub, as well as what it looks like. Everyone wants to celebrate Victorian pubs, because they're beautiful, cosy and sparkly — but that's a constructed image too. I started to ask: how else can I visualise the term ‘pub’? Who do these spaces work for, and who do they exclude? This became particularly pressing due to the context I was working in, as the image of the pub was being used for political ends. The image of the charming ‘traditional’ wooden pub was being used to trigger a sense of restorative nostalgia. So as an illustrator I needed to consider who was using these triggers and to what end, and how I positioned the pub (and myself) against that backdrop.
There is a serious tension between being a responsible practitioner and rewriting history
— There’s one image you wrote about in your paper – an online tabloid photo which showed female pub goers in a mocking way. How do you think re-working imagery through hand-drawn illustration can take a critical stance towards images like that?
—Oh, that newspaper is just awful. I’d rather not direct traffic to them because they trade in spite. It is useful to point at that kind of judgemental journalism and call it out. I recently got in touch with the Drinking Studies Network, and there are loads of academics doing fascinating work in that space looking into gender, class, drinking, and morality — at all these nonsensical judgements that are often about power.
I think it’s really important to engage with questions of remediation and criticality through the act of making. But there’s always the question of whether or not the message actually lands. I’m constantly worried about that in any kind of critical practice — about doing something that ends up just recuperating the very thing I’m trying to critique. I worry about shooting myself in the foot!
Lately, I’ve been thinking about redrawing, about combining visibly different visual languages, about moving from found footage to redrawn versions. That led me to look into things like re-photography and remediation — asking what that pictorial distance brings, and how it relates to the temporal and emotional distance that is a fundamental part of reflective nostalgia.
I’ve been reading Laura U. Marks, who writes about ‘analog nostalgia’, and how the materiality of analogue media reminds us of the lost past. That’s one of the nostalgic triggers I’m experimenting with — testing what sketchbook drawings bring to the table. For me, this re-mediation into drawing is an aesthetic decision that brings focus to the surface, taking away some inferences and replacing them with others, emphasising some aspects over others, while keeping the past at arm’s length. It allows you to state a position visually, without giving someone an essay. But at the same time, that opens up the issue of presentism — an idea Rachel Emily Taylor introduced to me through her piece for Colouring In — are we judging the past by today’s social norms and expectations? There is a serious tension between being a responsible practitioner and rewriting history.
There’s a need for sensitivity in working with materials from the past. I can’t have complete control over how the messages I’m trying to convey are going to land, but I am trying to introduce small reparative gestures that try to bring some humanity and compassion, and at least try not to do harm. This territory is a minefield, but at the same time this is where practice-based research is so valuable — you can explore and test things such as the triggers of nostalgic wistfulness: what happens if I change the colour? If I re-draw it? If I fake it digitally?
—Oh, that newspaper is just awful. I’d rather not direct traffic to them because they trade in spite. It is useful to point at that kind of judgemental journalism and call it out. I recently got in touch with the Drinking Studies Network, and there are loads of academics doing fascinating work in that space looking into gender, class, drinking, and morality — at all these nonsensical judgements that are often about power.
I think it’s really important to engage with questions of remediation and criticality through the act of making. But there’s always the question of whether or not the message actually lands. I’m constantly worried about that in any kind of critical practice — about doing something that ends up just recuperating the very thing I’m trying to critique. I worry about shooting myself in the foot!
Lately, I’ve been thinking about redrawing, about combining visibly different visual languages, about moving from found footage to redrawn versions. That led me to look into things like re-photography and remediation — asking what that pictorial distance brings, and how it relates to the temporal and emotional distance that is a fundamental part of reflective nostalgia.
I’ve been reading Laura U. Marks, who writes about ‘analog nostalgia’, and how the materiality of analogue media reminds us of the lost past. That’s one of the nostalgic triggers I’m experimenting with — testing what sketchbook drawings bring to the table. For me, this re-mediation into drawing is an aesthetic decision that brings focus to the surface, taking away some inferences and replacing them with others, emphasising some aspects over others, while keeping the past at arm’s length. It allows you to state a position visually, without giving someone an essay. But at the same time, that opens up the issue of presentism — an idea Rachel Emily Taylor introduced to me through her piece for Colouring In — are we judging the past by today’s social norms and expectations? There is a serious tension between being a responsible practitioner and rewriting history.
There’s a need for sensitivity in working with materials from the past. I can’t have complete control over how the messages I’m trying to convey are going to land, but I am trying to introduce small reparative gestures that try to bring some humanity and compassion, and at least try not to do harm. This territory is a minefield, but at the same time this is where practice-based research is so valuable — you can explore and test things such as the triggers of nostalgic wistfulness: what happens if I change the colour? If I re-draw it? If I fake it digitally?
Still from Gin Palace People projection
— You mentioned working with variations — different colors, materials, scales — and I wonder if showing your thinking process visually could invite a debate rather than present a single, fixed viewpoint.
— Yes! Making sure that the difference between the original archival imagery and its interpretation is clear is what connects the ideas of criticality, rephotography, and reflective nostalgia – a concept introduced by Svetlana Boym. As just one example, in my work I was using a painted white area as a mask between borrowed film footage and my own interpretation of it to highlight that discrepancy between the past and the present, between the decisions of other people and my own.
By making that gap visible, you’re showing: this is what we’re adding, this is what we’re changing, these are the different ways of seeing. That’s where the criticality comes in, when you are being transparent about the visual decisions you’re making, and what influence they have.
Of course, when this is applied to something like a musical performance — and your illustrations are just in the background — it may not land at all. You don’t have the luxury of writing an essay to explain your work.
By making that gap visible, you’re showing: this is what we’re adding, this is what we’re changing, these are the different ways of seeing. That’s where the criticality comes in, when you are being transparent about the visual decisions you’re making, and what influence they have.
Of course, when this is applied to something like a musical performance — and your illustrations are just in the background — it may not land at all. You don’t have the luxury of writing an essay to explain your work.
Hurrah! It’s Butlins! as screened in Reds, 2022 and 2024
— That makes me think of how illustration is often in the background in a broader sense — as a field. We can’t stand on stage with a mic and explain the meaning, right?
— Maybe, though, it is an opportunity to think about the affordances of this position. Maybe that’s where illustration can achieve more — together with other forms as part of a multimodal text that heightens each part’s communicative capacity, and operates within an appropriate community. When you combine it with performance, music, or installation, that expands what illustration can achieve.
That’s what I’m interested in at the moment, how illustration can have real affect. And how it can bring something social and critical into what’s seen as the morally derelict wasteland of nostalgia, if you believe some critics!
That’s what I’m interested in at the moment, how illustration can have real affect. And how it can bring something social and critical into what’s seen as the morally derelict wasteland of nostalgia, if you believe some critics!
— Site-specific illustration often ends up reflecting the agenda of the space it’s in, or diffusing the message in the image. Do you think illustrators can push back on that? Or is there always a limit to what kind of change or critique is possible?
— Yeah, I think about that a lot. I think though it’s easier to navigate all of these questions from within the group you’re speaking to, when you know your audience. Like now, in this conversation — I have a sense of the audience, of the language I can use. Knowing the recipients ensures trust and allows negotiation.
— How did your work cover the issues of reflective nostalgia in the case of the Butlins film?
— I was screening my work at Reds (Butlins, Bognor Regis) during the Rockaway Beach festival, a music event. The music festival goers would be aware of the hyperreal, constructed nature of spaces like Butlins. Some of the archival images I used – holiday camp postcards from the 60s by John Hinde – are also complete fabrications — perfect, utopian visions of leisure. They’re fascinating because they give us an insight into these nostalgic visual triggers. They’re polished, refined, and carefully composed; beautiful but artificial. They’ve been curated down to the last detail — plants moved, lighting adjusted. They’re not “real” at all. But that doesn’t stop them from being powerful. That wistfulness, that emotional pull — it’s real. And that’s what I want to explore.
Nostalgia is really powerful. People respond to it deeply. But too often, it’s dismissed and taken with a degree of snobbery — or worse, co-opted by the likes of Nigel Farage with the ‘brown pub’ behind him. But what if we used it differently? What if we examined it critically?
This is why I’m drawn to Svetlana Boym’s reflective nostalgia — something that doesn’t involve being stuck in the past, but asks us to reflect on the present in order to act. I’m focused on what illustrators can do with the past in the present, what reflections we can spark. There’s a sense of hope in there!
Nostalgia is really powerful. People respond to it deeply. But too often, it’s dismissed and taken with a degree of snobbery — or worse, co-opted by the likes of Nigel Farage with the ‘brown pub’ behind him. But what if we used it differently? What if we examined it critically?
This is why I’m drawn to Svetlana Boym’s reflective nostalgia — something that doesn’t involve being stuck in the past, but asks us to reflect on the present in order to act. I’m focused on what illustrators can do with the past in the present, what reflections we can spark. There’s a sense of hope in there!
Still from Hurrah! It’s Butlins! film