Retelling the past: Narrative construction and reconstruction using personal photographs and the elicitation of nostalgia

Abstract

While extensive research on nostalgia highlights its significance as a pancultural emotion which is experienced across the lifespan and which has various psychological benefits, qualitative research on the phenomenological and contextual aspects of nostalgia is limited. This article utilizes a constructivist approach to examine nostalgic narratives constructed in the process of selecting and discussing one’s personal photographs. The study aims to expand on the psychological benefits of nostalgia by focusing on the experiential and contextual aspects of this emotion. Eliciting nostalgia through participants’ childhood photographs during in-depth interviews revealed three strategies for reconstructing narrative and giving meaning to past events: (1) Mending the past; (2) Unchosen photographs; (3) Turning points. Utilizing nostalgia and personal photographs not only revealed implicit cultural context, but also assisted participants in creating continuity over time and enabled beneficial contact with complex and conflictual parts of self and biography. Therefore, this unique methodology has potential applications within qualitative research methods in psychology as well as within various therapeutic interventions.

Introduction

Comprehensive research on nostalgia touches upon its significance as a pancultural emotion (Hepper et al., 2014) which is experienced across the lifespan (Hepper et al., 2021) and has numerous psychological and social benefits (Abeyta et al., 2015; Sedikides & Wildschut, 2016; Van Tilburg et al., 2018). However, qualitative research on the experience of nostalgia is still scarce, leaving a phenomenological and contextual gap within current research literature. In order to examine one’s experience of nostalgia and the ways in which people construct and reconstruct nostalgic narratives, the research design relied on the intersection of narrative, nostalgia, and personal photographs.

Nostalgia – psychological and critical perspectives

Though nostalgia can be broadly defined as “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past” (The New Oxford Dictionary of English, 1998, p. 1266), recent scholarship views nostalgia as a psychological resource with a multitude of benefits (Routledge et al., 2012; Sedikides et al., 2015). Nostalgia creates an active dialogue between past and present, not only bridging the gaps of time and creating continuity, but also assisting us in coping with the loss of times passed (Sedikides et al., 2015). Furthermore, nostalgia serves as a personal archive of meaningful experiences which one can lean on in times of despair (Juhl et al., 2010; Routledge et al., 2008), and a secure base for handling the uncertainties of the future (Davis, 1979; Pickering & Keightley, 2006). But beyond nostalgia’s function as a psychological resource, it also holds a critical function. Research that is devoted to nostalgic sentiments among marginalized and oppressed groups, views nostalgia as a critical act of resistance against attempts to erase their past (Giles, 2002; Spitzer, 1999). While this study did not focus specifically on marginalized populations, it did view the act of remembering and narrating of nostalgia within the context of social, political and economic forces (Brescó de Luna, 2016).

Narrative and identity

A narrative, according to Sarbin (1986), is a symbolic and temporal account of human actions, with a beginning, a middle and an end, conceived through a plot. Human beings think, perceive, imagine and make moral decisions according to narrative structures (Crossley, 2000; Sarbin, 1986). Moreover, people use narrative in order to establish a self, while linking together the different elements in their life story (Baddeley & Singer, 2007; Sarbin, 1986), creating a sense of continuity and coherence and maintaining identity (McAdams et al., 2006). Narratives enable us to both deconstruct and reconstruct our life experiences into a more adaptive and integrative story (Crossley, 2000) and are thus an integral part of the human experience. Furthermore, narrative also enables us to communicate ourselves, both internally and externally (Bruner, 2004; Crossley, 2000; Sarbin, 1986), and to make connections between our personal story and the environment (Crossley, 2000) and culture we live in (McAdams, 2001).

Therefore, this study is based on the assumption that stories, in their content and form, as they are told, changed and retold, constitute the identity of the storyteller; they express our internal reality, while simultaneously structuring our external reality (Josselson, 2013; Lieblich et al., 1998; McAdams et al., 2006). Nostalgia, in this regard, functions as a way of maintaining one’s identity over time and enabling a coherent narrative, due to its intrinsic temporal disposition – linking together past and present (Sedikides et al., 2015).

Personal photographs

This study utilized personal childhood photographs as a means of constructing narrative and eliciting nostalgia. We relied on the premise that childhood photographs, as a ‘present past’, induce reflexivity and internal dialogue over different life periods (Weiser, 1993). Personal photographs enable us to return to lived experiences; one-time moments that are etched on paper (Barthes, 1993) or, more recently, captured digitally. They serve as biographical, projective and communicational objects, through which we can explore our identity and relationships, as they evolve over time (Van Dijck, 2008; Van House, 2011; Weiser, 1993).

A photograph is a material object which represents and connects us to past realities on the one hand, and a conceptual object subjected to our individual projections on the other (Elkins, 2011). Moran (2002) addressed the importance of childhood photographs specifically, as sentimental objects and a source of nostalgic emotion which preserves the romantic perception of childhood as a natural, spontaneous and worriless time. But beyond their documentational aspect, photographs also serve as points of reference in our lives; testaments to the changes we have gone through over time. Observing and reflecting upon personal photographs enables us to connect with our past selves as we develop our self-concept through different points of view and reassess these viewpoints time and again (Van House, 2011). Thus, this study assumes that the different meanings a particular photograph carries derive not only from its content and form, but also from the stories that are told about it (Jiménez-Alonso & Bresco de Luna, 2022).

Methodology

This study was based on a phenomenological ontology, and therefore sought to uncover subjective truths out of lived experience through a constructivist approach. This approach both acknowledges the power structures and political and social contexts of knowledge production, as well as intends to gain a broad perspective on the researched phenomena from a wide range of standpoints (Adom et al., 2016).

Participants

The study included eight participants, four women and four men, between the ages of 29 and 79 years. The lower limit of the age range, which was initially set at 25, was chosen in order to ensure a reasonable time gap between each participant’s childhood and the present, in order to induce nostalgia. In addition, the intent was to rely on analogical photographs, which serve a unique purpose as meaningful objects (Van House, 2011). Participants were Israelis of different backgrounds: some were first-generation immigrants to Israel, with some raised in cities and small villages in the United States, Russia and Morocco. Others were second-generation immigrants to Israel, who were raised in a city or a kibbutz (communal living arrangement) in the center or periphery of Israel. Most participants had acquired a post-secondary education and they were of lower-middle to upper-middle class. All participants defined themselves as having non-religious Jewish backgrounds. Recruiting participants from the general Israeli population, without specific limitations (other than minimum age), was done with the intention of collecting a broad set of nostalgic experiences and life stories. Participants were recruited through ads in public Facebook groups, as well as through the Snowball sampling method (Parker et al., 2019).

Photograph assisted interview

A semi-structured interview format which included the use of personal photographs, was developed specifically for this study, but was based in part on the Narrative Interview method (Bach, 2007; Josselson, 2013; Lieblich et al., 1998), the Photo Elicitation Interview (Clark-Ibanez, 2004; Harper, 2002), and certain aspects of Photovoice (Sutton-Brown, 2014). Moreover, the integration of photographs in the interview process drew on Phototherapy: the therapeutic use of photography and photographs as a non-verbal path towards subconscious and internal content, through which one may reach insight (Weiser, 1993). Thus, the use of existing personal photographs was intended not only as a means of eliciting nostalgia (Moran, 2002), but also as a means of promoting self-disclosure among interviewees (Shechtman & Tsegahun, 2004) and generating narratives (Weiser, 1993). The methodological use of photography as a way of constructing narratives and giving voice to interviewees has been widely used in the social sciences. However, the use of one’s existing personal photographs is an innovative method used rarely within qualitative research and therefore offers new possibilities and opportunities within qualitative research methods (Josselson & Hammack, 2021) in psychology, as well as other disciplines.

The interviews took place in each participant’s home, during 2017, and the duration of each interview was one to two hours long. Interviews included five steps: First, each interviewee was asked, prior to the interview, to choose five personal childhood photographs (from ages 0–18) and two adult photographs – in which the interviewee appears. Second, during the interview, participants were asked to organize the photographs chosen by them in chronological order and then to discuss each photograph in turn. Third, they were asked to relate to all photographs together, telling their childhood story, in addition to relating to the dialogue between childhood and adult photographs. Fourth, they were asked to give a title to each photograph. Finally, participants were asked a few questions regarding the meaning they attribute to nostalgia. In order to prevent bias, participants were not initially informed that nostalgia was the topic of the study, but were only asked about it at the end of the interview.

Narrative analysis

The primary analysis was conducted according to the Narrative Inquiry method (Lieblich et al., 1998), in which each interview was analyzed in four ways: categorical; content focused; holistic; form focused. Each of these analyses offered a unique perspective on the interviews, leading to the identification of several overarching themes. The analysis also gave weight to the choice of photographs (Berman, 1993) and the titles given to them (Green, 1999; Kacen, 2002) in the context of the larger scheme of each participant’s narrative. After analyzing each interview as a whole, a cross-analysis of the eight interviews was conducted in order to further deepen the interpretation of the detected themes.

Ethical Considerations

The interviews were recorded and transcribed after receiving written informed consent from participants, and each participant received a pseudonym in order to ensure confidentiality. Participants’ photographs were copied and saved, along with the transcriptions, under a password protected device. The study received ethical approval from the IRB at the University of Haifa.

As researchers, whose goal was to listen and become a part of an emotional experience during interviews, we employed a hermeneutics of faith, or more accurately coined by Josselson (2004) a “Hermaneutics of Restoration.” In this sense, participants were regarded as the experts on their lives and narratives. However, having access to specific theories and knowledge undoubtedly shaped the way interviews were interpreted. The interviewer was a young woman graduate student, uncovering her journey through her own nostalgia in the beginning of her career, and this no doubt affected the short-lived relationships she forged with her interviewees. In this respect, she felt more at ease with young interviewees who were at a similar stage in life as she was, rather than older interviewees whose life experiences were not as relatable. Moreover, older interviewees treated her differently as well, as someone who might not understand them, and who isn’t knowledgeable enough to relate to their life experiences or might judge them through a skewed millennial lens. For example, during his interview, Avi (m, 79) asked: “Churchill and Roosevelt, do you know who they are?”. This question signifies not only a potential generational gap, but perhaps Avi’s way of highlighting his expertise and reminding us who holds the knowledge here. Moreover, this further emphasizes the importance of context and cultural perceptions of whose knowledge is credible and what types of knowledge are valuable (Fricker, 2007).

Findings

The narrative analysis led to the identification of three main strategies participants used in order to reconstruct their childhood narratives: Mending the Past; Unchosen Photographs as Implicit Content; and Turning Points: Agency and Self Continuity. These strategies will be herein presented along with some excerpts in the interviewees’ own words. The gender and age of each interviewee is indicated in parenthesis as their name first appears under each discussed theme.

Mending the past

An overarching theme that stood out in the interviews was the way in which nostalgia enabled participants to retell their past. Discussing their past difficulties, participants related to experiences of rejection, shame, loneliness or discrimination, but often managed to see the good in them. It appears that the process of constructing a childhood narrative through the prism of nostalgia, enabled participants beneficial contact with and reformulation of upsetting or conflictual experiences from their past.

While some participants claimed to have no nostalgia for their past, they did in fact relate to their childhood as very positive and tended to idealize painful events. Avi (m, 79), who was diagnosed with a debilitating disease as an infant, was intended to immigrate with his family to Israel, but due to his disability was left behind in an immigrant camp as a child, while his parents and siblings immigrated without him. Despite what could be seen as a complicated or upsetting situation, along with the difficult living conditions he described, Avi depicted his time alone in the immigrant camp as a joyful and wonderous time:

This place [the camp] was on a mountain and it has water wells, canals for drinking water, blooming gardens and... vineyards and all kinds of fruit orchards and mysterious places under the trees and all kinds of... special birds and it was really something... and the water there is as if taken from the garden of eden, delicious and cool, and from there you go out to flowering fields […] Now this… when I… [look at] the certificate, this certificate reminds me that I came alone to Israel. […] My parents immigrated and I was left alone.

The contrast between the romanticized depiction of Avi’s time at the immigrant camp, and the fact he was left there alone is striking. Perhaps it is this nostalgic idealization that enables Avi to process painful experiences from his past and integrate them into an amended story, wherein he is the hero who overcomes abandonment and injustice.

In this sense, participants’ nostalgia functioned as an opportunity to tell their childhood story from a perspective of gratitude. Several interviewees discussed their conscious intent of mending or ‘fixing’ the past, which served as a means of coping with the pain and disparity they experienced as children and adolescents. Choosing specific photographs proved meaningful in Inbal’s (w, 41) and Dana’s (w, 41) narratives, as they both explained how they deliberately chose certain photographs in order to emphasize the positive aspects of their childhood. During her interview, Inbal discussed an emotional disconnect between her and her mother from birth, as well as a concrete disconnect at present, as the two have cut all ties. In this context, her choice of photographs acted as a way of reconnecting with her mother by focusing on moments of warmth and connection:

Except for the first photo... these are all happy moments, some kind of an attempt, I think, to capture the good. Uh… to be compassionate towards my mother, to also see the good things that they [her parents] did for me [...] to see the love I did receive and not what I didn’t receive.

In the same vein, Dana chose to transform her perception of her childhood self by focusing her attention on moments of happiness:

I perceive my childhood as something less happy... like, I don’t see myself as a happy child. Today I’m a much happier person so… I like this photo because I see that it was happy [...] to remind myself that… other angles, that I wasn’t just sad when I was little. […] I’m trying to change the story that I tell myself about my childhood and see the things that were… that were positive, that I would… I would like to remember. To have that be my nostalgia.

Dana’s wish to create an alternative story, wherein there is a nostalgia towards the positive moments in her childhood teaches us about one’s need to seek continuity between their past and their present, creating a coherent narrative. Furthermore, seeking the positive moments in one’s past, we argue, functions on two levels: first, as a means of challenging one’s perception and memory of their past, recognizing that memory is situated; second, as a means of conforming to social norms which value happy and romanticized childhoods.

As participants brought up self-doubt and self-criticism as a result of maltreatment from parents or peers during their childhood, they also discussed self-love at present and an appreciation for their ability to overcome hardship. Amnon (m, 75) who dealt with a heavy stutter and dyslexia as a child, discussed how raising a successful family was one of his greatest accomplishments in life:

This boy was born to love, uhh… it isn’t obvious that… uh… this is [now] his life. He doesn’t know yet, he doesn’t know how good it’s going to get […] all he can… mostly do, is go with the flow of life, go with the flow of his life […] we became a model of a family uh… that the kids will be the first generation in academic studies. […] the three of us [his siblings and himself] are a very big success, very big, in every criterion… of… of uh… fulfilling life, very close-knit families.

Looking back nostalgically at their past, participants were able to reconstruct a childhood narrative that doesn’t overlook their ‘growing pains’ but transforms them into bearable points in their personal history. Through idealization, seeking the positive, and viewing their difficulties within the broader context of their adult life, participants were able to divert self-blame and show compassion towards themselves and towards significant figures in their childhood. The ability and intent to mend the past was evident also in the titles participants gave to their chosen photographs, which served an additional layer in the process of retelling their childhood story (Green, 1999; Kacen, 2002). Positive and generalized titles such as “What a beautiful day”; “On a bench in the garden and a happy childhood”; “Fascinating childhood” assisted in mitigating the hurt or despair participants had experienced as children, given that telling the story is now in their adult hands.

Photographs unchosen as implicit content

While the selection of photographs enabled participants to reconstruct their childhood narrative and mend past experiences, it also shed light on the photographs that were not chosen for the interview and further highlighted the specific contexts in which participants’ narratives had been constructed. Avi (m, 79), who spent his childhood dealing with a physical disability and the social, educational and emotional ramifications of it, chose only photographs wherein he is alone and unaccompanied by others. When asked about this choice, he explained: “I deliberately chose photographs that didn’t include other people that are objects in themselves, I wanted… I am the subject here”. This deliberate choice not only symbolizes Avi’s wish to be at the center of his story, as a person who had experienced discrimination by his closest kin, but also helps contextualize his narrative as existing in an environment which marginalizes and renders irrelevant the stories of people with disabilities (Fricker, 2007; Scott, 2014; Tuana, 2006).

Similarly, whether conscious or not, other participants left out photographs of specific family members. Amnon (m, 75), at the end of his interview, felt the need to show the interviewer additional photographs of his parents and family, after noticing he had neglected his father in his initial choice:

It was a ‘huggy’ family, we loved hugging uh… the Balkans on my mother’s side, my dad was completely different… It’s interesting that I didn’t choose any photograph of my father uh… my father was a smart man and... and… I didn’t… I didn’t get the most out of him because I left for boarding school […] I’m surprised again how my father doesn’t appear in any of these photos.

In a similar vain, Yaron (m, 33) excluded his brother from his chosen photographs, later explaining how his brother’s mental illness had affected their relationship:

There was one photo with Shachar, my brother who is about a year younger than I am umm… and honestly I didn’t choose it because… today we’re distant. I can’t say we’re in a fight, but we have a distant relationship. It’s too bad […] maybe this represents something not so good, a loss.

Amnon’s surprise at his omission of his father from his childhood story and his choice to show the interviewer additional photographs, is perhaps his way of constructing a positive narrative, wherein both parents are present and meaningful. This, in light of experiencing divorce and working hard to unify his own family, nurturing a close relationship between his ex-wife and current wife. Similarly, Yaron’s choice to exclude his brother from his childhood story can be understood not only as a symbol for their complicated relationship, but also as an attempt to create a positive view of his childhood and family – for himself, but for the interviewer as well. Therefore, we argue that ‘unchosen’ photographs should be interpreted not only as a strategy for reconstructing narrative, but also as silences or gaps within a narrative, alluding to cultural context and representing “unsayable” content through a ‘language of silence’ (Rogers, 1999, pp. 88–89).

In this context, Vladi (m, 29), who emigrated with his family from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) to Israel at the age of 5, chose only photographs from after emigrating. This choice can be seen as a way of shifting away from distressing parts of his past, in addition to Vladi’s evasion of discussing immigration in general. But beyond the need to avoid discussing conflict or expressing difficult feelings towards his family’s immigration experience, this omission also signifies a social expectation towards emigres in Israel, to assimilate and become part of the Jewish-Israeli mainstream, by leaving behind their cultural heritage and identity (Remennick & Prashizky, 2018).

An additional aspect on the omission of photographs, is perhaps a gendered one, as the choice (or ‘unchoice’) of photographs had a different quality among the different participants. Although this study included a small sample, it seemed that women participants openly discussed their deliberate choice of certain photographs and their need to mend the past through that choice, while men participants viewed their omissions as unconscious or accidental. This may be due to the interviewer-interviewee dynamic, which is no doubt affected by the gender of the interviewer (in this case, a woman) and delineates specific discourses and cultural performances of gender and power relations (Butler, 1990). Moreover, social constructs and perceptions of what stories are worthy or valuable, and whether or not vulnerability or pain are worthy of expression (Connell, 1996), also play a role in the narratives that men and women tell.

Turning points – agency and self continuity

During the interviews, participants discussed a meaningful moment in their childhood which led to a significant change in their narratives. Some interviewees discussed redemption sequences, wherein there is a narrative shift from negative to positive (McAdams & Bowman, 2001). Avi (m, 79) discussed his move to Israel as a redemptive turning point, which enabled him independence from his parents’ overprotection due to his disability, as he was then able to begin his formal education at the age of fourteen, continue to higher education, and eventually earn a respectable profession:

Since I wasn’t in school then I just walked around, and I happen to pass by a school and see two guys, I ask them ‘what are you doing here?’, they said ‘this is a school, we study’, I asked them ‘Can I be accepted too?’, they said ‘sure, let’s talk to the principal he’ll accept you now, you’ll start studying’ and that’s what happened […] Here, I am little Avi, who didn't go to school. But after I went to school and saw there are many more steps to climb, I continued climbing with all my strength. I knew that each step I climb would give me power and move me forward.

Similarly, Inbal (w, 41) brought up a social turning point after enlisting in the army, where she acquired many meaningful friendships:

After many years of loneliness I went to the army, and from then on, surprisingly, I did very well socially […] I was very lonely and then suddenly I came to the army and met different kinds of people and I suddenly realized I’m popular, me, who had no friends all those years […] If in high-school I had none, then afterwards I did, and really good friends that to this day I’m really close with

While both turning point sequences led to a positive outcome, the amount of control and choice each participant discussed is quite different. While Avi presents himself as an active agent, who initiates a discussion with his peers, asks to be accepted to school, and then “climbs” the steps of social status, Inbal presents herself as a passive agent, who suddenly and surprisingly acquires friends and becomes popular, by what seems to be a stroke of good luck.

In line with this lack of choice and control, other participants presented contamination sequences (McAdams & Bowman, 2001), wherein a significant event in their childhood had caused an unwanted negative change. Gali (w, 30) talked about the birth of her younger sister as a negative turning point, which disturbed her sense of security in the world, and altered her relationship with her parents:

There’s the version of before my sister and the version of after my sister. This is really uh clear. And I think you can also see it in my face, like, I suddenly didn’t understand my place […] before that, I was like, my parents' child… […] and now, suddenly, I had to share the love.

In a similar fashion, Tamar (w, 58) discussed an unexplained turning point in her infancy, from which she stopped feeling loved by her parents:

Up until this point I felt very loved and wanted, and from here on there was some rupture […] I felt that I disappointed them, at a very small age, otherwise why would they stop loving me […] I don’t see any… I don’t have anything that I can, in my family’s history or my personal or… and still there’s something that like, at the age of one I started disappointing my parents…

These two accounts of negative turning points are unique, not only because they vividly express pain and sadness, but also because they serve to show that despite such pain, participants were still nostalgic and still experienced a sense of continuity from past to present.

Although participants’ turning points often depicted a momentous and pivotal change in their lives, these didn’t hinder their sense of self continuity, but rather helped them explain and give meaning to the different ways in which the rest of their life story unfolded. When asked what parts of their childhood remain present in their lives today, most participants expressed a feeling of continuity, while acknowledging the changes they've gone through along the years: “some of the basic things have changed and a lot of the superficial things as well, but at the end of the day it’s [I’m] the same person” (Yaron, m, 33); “a lot of me, of who I was as a child has in some way remained… remained within me” (Inbal, w, 41); “This boy is my foundation” (Avi, m, 79). These findings further advance the current perception of nostalgia as enabling a continuum of the self and a cohesive narrative identity over time (Baldwin et al., 2015; Hong et al., 2022; Routledge et al., 2012).

An additional difference between participants’ turning point sequences lies in their emotional focus. Whereas Avi’s emotional focus was on his education and the professional outcome it led to, Tamar, Gali and Inbal put their emotional focus on close relationships. This difference further emphasizes how different life contexts affect how people construct narrative (Zilber et al., 2008). Thus, we argue, such differences in emotional expression and content may allude to social and cultural differences which affect how different people piece together their life experiences into a narrative identity.

Discussion

All three themes, Mending the Past, Photographs Unchosen as Implicit Content, and Turning Points –Agency and Self Continuity, highlight the ways in which people utilize nostalgia in order to construct a cohesive childhood narrative which “convey[s] a progressive understanding of self – the self as growing, moving forward, making progress over time” (McAdams & Bowman, 2001, p. 5). When focusing on the positive, participants did not ignore their childhood difficulties but rather managed to integrate the bad with the good and create a continuous narrative, thus highlighting the advantages of nostalgia as a resource of self-continuity (Sedikides et al., 2015).

Whether choosing photographs and titles which prioritize the positive aspects of the past, or excluding photographs which may undermine the overall positive outlook on their past, most participants told stories of redemption (McAdams, 2001), framing themselves as the main heroes of their narrative, succeeding as adults against a backdrop of childhood adversity. In this sense, participants experienced a narrative transformation, not only in their perception of past events and past relationships, but also in the way they view themselves, by highlighting their capabilities and their strengths (Vess et al., 2012), past and present. This corresponds with previous perceptions of nostalgia as a way of glorifying one’s past (Davis, 1979; Moran, 2002), and a means of increasing optimism towards the future (Cheung et al., 2013).

While the omission of photographs can teach us about the relationships in participants’ lives, they also give us a broader perspective on their need to tell an honorable story, perhaps attempting to avoid discussing conflict or pain (Pugh, 2013). These omissions, which may be interpreted through Rogers’ (1999) framework of the ‘unsayable’, also serve as clues to implicit cultural knowledge (Pugh, 2013). This solidifies our argument that the selection of photographs has significance within one’s narrative: both because it draws specific meanings in the context of each participant’s life story (Berman, 1993; Weiser, 1993) and because it carries broader cultural and social meanings.

Moreover, this study also highlighted the idea that people of different backgrounds have different ways of constructing childhood narratives (McAdams & Bowman, 2001). For example, Avi, an elderly man with a disability, explicitly discussed his need to tell a positive story in light of his childhood troubles. This may shed light on the ways in which, through nostalgic narrative (Giles, 2002; Spitzer, 1999), people of marginalized groups attempt to actively articulate their agency (Secules et al., 2018) and give voice to their experiences in a world which may view them as weak (Manderson & Peake, 2005) or leave them silenced or voiceless (Fricker, 2007; Tuana, 2006). Furthermore, this highlights the importance of context when analyzing people’s narratives (Zilber et al., 2008), as culture, gender and ability play an important role in the way that people construct narrative (Smith, 2004) and articulate themselves within an interview.

One’s desire to tell a positive redemptive story, beyond its benefit to one’s self concept (Vess et al., 2012) and psychological wellbeing (McAdams, 2001; Routledge et al., 2013) can also be interpreted as a need to fit within lay conceptions of what is an honorable story or what an outsider or researcher would want to hear (Pugh, 2013). These conceptions are culturally specific, as “Different cultures provide different rules for how to tell a story about a life” (McAdams & Bowman, 2001, p. 29). As mentioned earlier, an interviewee who immigrated from the FSU to Israel chose to exclude his immigration experiences from his narrative, as these might not be considered important or interesting, especially in a neoliberal society wherein moving forward and progressing are valued over looking back (Rosa, 2013). Thus, the omission of pre-immigration photographs and experiences, carries, in this case, implicit cues to specific cultural norms and represents silenced narratives that are not always welcome within hegemonic Jewish-Israeli culture (Remennick & Prashizky, 2018).

As for turning points, these were of substantial importance within participants’ narratives, as they enabled interviewer and interviewee to clearly detect the main emotional focus within one’s narrative, in this case - close relationships and education. This further suggests that turning points function as central and meaningful points in time which may serve as anchors in one’s life story (Enz & Talarico, 2016), as they enable one to give meaning to unexpected or major life changes (Wethington, 2003). Turning point sequences also unveiled different experiences of agency among participants. For example, while Avi depicted himself as an active agent in his turning point sequence, Gali, Tamar and Inbal, talked about turning points which were incidental and out of their own hands. This narration of one’s control over the changes in their life may exemplify gendered or cultural differences in how people of different backgrounds are socialized (Ronka et al., 2003) and perceive their own power and agency (Connell, 1996). Either way, the ability to control their own narrative at present, enabled participants a sense of agency (Asad, 2000) towards their childhood, as many expressed a lack of control as children, who had no choice but to comply with their parents’ decisions.

Conclusion

This study explored the ways in which people construct and reconstruct childhood narratives through personal photographs and nostalgia. Findings support and add to current scholarship on nostalgia as a psychological resource (Routledge et al., 2013), as participants were able to process difficult experiences and reconstruct positive cohesive narratives (Sedikides et al., 2008; Wildschut et al., 2006) without disregarding childhood adversity. The selection and discussion of the photographs enabled participants a reflexive observation on their self and lived experience over time: an opportunity to negotiate past and present selves (Vess et al., 2012); to recall painful and joyful experiences; and to process difficult or conflictual relationships (Abeyta et al., 2015). These findings contribute to qualitative research methodology, as well as to various therapeutic practices and interventions, which may utilize nostalgia and personal photographs in order to reconstruct narrative and to enhance one’s sense of self-continuity. Furthermore, although this was a small-scale study, the chosen and ‘unchosen’ photographs and the turning points participants discussed also told a cultural story, wherein people of different backgrounds put forth different experiences of agency and emotional expression. In this respect, nostalgia may assist people in identifying turning points in the personal narrative, as the detection of turning points requires a temporal distance (Wheaton & Gotlib, 1997), which nostalgia naturally employs. Thus, this study bears both theoretical and methodological implications for future research.

First, gender and culture differences in the experience of nostalgia should be further explored, as research on the specific contexts within which nostalgia is experienced is limited. While this study attempted to discuss and further understand context in relation to nostalgia, it was limited in scope: All 8 participants were Jewish-Israeli and (self-reported) cisgender and heterosexual. Second, the methodological coupling of personal photographs and nostalgia may be a valuable method of research with various groups, as it enables ‘hidden’ content to emerge while also mitigating pain and creating meaning. This may allow researchers to collect a broader set of data, while at the same time enabling participants a sense of cohesion and safety in discussing difficult experiences. Third, attention to the omittance of photographs should be viewed as an integral part of any qualitative method which utilizes photography, as it can be interpreted as a silence (Rogers, 1999) which, if listened to attentively, may enable us to reach in-depth, maximal interpretations (Reed, 2011). Fourth, although not the main focus of this article, personal photographs in themselves, as well as the title’s given to them, and the manner in which they are stored and presented (Berman, 1993), carry much information about people’s lives; pictures, or their absence, may speak louder than words. As such, they may serve an effective research tool in learning about a person’s past or present social status, meaningful relationships, physical ability, cultural background and more.