Nicole Ratos Enerson - Honeysuckle

In an effort to sell an advertising campaign to Kodak in Season 1, Episode 13 of Mad Men, Don Draper pitches an idea to the company’s executives for their newest product, the slide carousel. Draper says the key is selling a sense of nostalgia while also promoting it as the newest technology. He calls nostalgia a “delicate but potent” tool and goes on to give a brief etymology of the word, reminding us of its Greek roots, notos (return) and algos (pain).

Don identifies the pain of nostalgia as a “twinge in your heart,” rather than just a simple memory. He goes on to call photography a time machine, effortlessly taking us forwards and backwards in time, and convinces his audience that nostalgia provokes a deep emptiness that only this new technology, photography, can fill. In a brilliant campaign that shows him at his best, Draper argues that photography is both an artifact of an emerging future, and a technology that takes us back in time,. He also hits on a key attribute of photography: by preserving the moments we value, the medium is inherently nostalgic and romantic, presenting each one of us with tokens to help us cherish our memories.

As it relates to contemporary photography, I find nostalgia a trap, often straddling a fine line between sentimentality and longing. Too much sentimentality and it can feel saccharine, but balanced just so, and it can also reveal an acute feeling for beauty peppered with heartache and despair. This is precisely what photographer Nicole Ratos Enerson achieves in her new book Honeysuckle, a colorful meditation on home, landscape, and motherhood. Published by Datz Press in Korea, the book is both quaint and richly produced, creating the right tone for engaging Enerson’s photographs.

As it relates to contemporary photography, I find nostalgia a trap, often straddling a fine line between sentimentality and longing. Too much sentimentality and it can feel saccharine, but balanced just so, and it can also reveal an acute feeling for beauty peppered with heartache and despair.

Trained as a painter (BFA from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and MFA from Cornell University), Enerson’s photographs are grounded in a deep, clear connection to color and a unique ability to make simple gestures essential attributes of her compositions – two hands touching above the surface of the water or a grassy bed left behind by deer feel a bit like a canvas animated by delicate but strong brushstrokes. The pictures in Honeysuckle oscillate back and forth between images of two children – a young boy and a girl, both presumably her kids – and a thickly vegetated rural landscape, a pastoral backdrop with the comfort of home. Her son is the central character of the book, often exploring the landscape with shovels, tents, and boots, and even befriending a grasshopper.

Enerson’s photographs are grounded in a deep, clear connection to color and a unique ability to make simple gestures essential attributes of her compositions.

Interspersed among the photographs are excerpts of a poem by Susan Stewart, which Enerson provides as a prompt for reflecting on childhood and a gradual loss of innocence:

And the marred twines of cinquefoil, false strawberry, sumac –
nothing comes down to us here,
stained. A low branch swinging above a brook
in that place where I was raised, the forest was tangled,
and a cave just the width of shoulder blades.

Before opening the book, the cover and title give away a great deal about its content. Honeysuckle is a small book, at least by photobook standards, and handsomely bound with a dark blue linen spine and a photograph of forget-me-nots. For centuries, the sweet-smelling honeysuckle flower has symbolized happiness, sweetness, affection, and love. The forget-me-nots and honeysuckle provide the perfect point of departure for the narrative that follows, one animated by rich, fragrant colors, simple but evocative juxtapositions and metaphors, and an affection tempered with a little “twinge in your heart.”

For centuries, the sweet-smelling honeysuckle flower has symbolized happiness, sweetness, affection, and love. The forget-me-nots and honeysuckle provide the perfect point of departure for the narrative that follows, one animated by rich, fragrant colors, simple but evocative juxtapositions and metaphors, and an affection tempered with a little “twinge in your heart.”

I think we can learn a bit more about Honeysuckle by looking at the list of other American photographers published by Datz, which includes Barbara Bosworth, Linda Connor, Phyllis Galembo, Amanda Marchand, and Lonnie Graham. Each of these photographers unabashedly embraces beauty and nostalgia, a pictorialist vision full of romance and longing (I wouldn’t normally call Galembo such a romantic but the Datz publication of her work from Haiti definitely fits the bill). Photography’s ability to evoke the past is connected to our most elemental, visceral attraction to it, as Draper pitches it to Kodak.

Enerson understands this idea, but also reminds us that in the hands of the right photographer it can also help us to better live in the present, reminding us that if so much beauty exists in our memories, it can in this moment too. And here lies the strength of Honeysuckle, embracing nostalgia and sentimentality without hesitation, and yet also still feeling like contemporary photography – just what Don had in mind when selling Kodak the idea of a time machine.