I.
As someone who grew up in the 1970s and remains amorously fascinated with the period - the music, the TV, the fashion, the football, the girls (not necessarily in that order) - of course I'm excited by the work of British photographer and filmmaker Rachel Fleminger Hudson ...
II.
An ultra-talented graduate of Central Saint Martins and winner of the 2022 Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents, Fleminger Hudson's highly-stylised images recreate the aesthetics of the period within a contemporary cultural context, thereby loosening the "aura of necessity and sanctity surrounding categories of the present" [1].
Although often playful, her images are meticulously researched, carefully staged with authentic objects and outfits, and invested with ideas drawn from her intellectual background in cultural studies and critical theory; we can tell this by the fact that, when interviewed, she prefers to speak of hauntology rather than mere nostalgia [2], although, clearly, Fleminger Hudson is yearing for something in her work; if not for the past or for home as such, then perhaps for the intimacy of touch in a digital age.
III.
People of a certain age - like me - might remember the '70s and even publish posts on their glam-punk childhood: click here, for example.
But nobody reimagines the decade better than Fleminger Hudson and it's this creative reimagining rather than a straightforward recollection that somehow best captures the spirit of the times and, more importantly perhaps, projects elements of the past into the future, so that we might live yesterday tomorrow - as Malcolm would say - rekindling sparks of forgotten joy [3].
Although she's not a fashion photographer per se, it's the fashions of the 1970s that most excite Fleminger Hudson's interest; a true philosopher on the catwalk, she clearly believes that clothes maketh the period and express not only the individuality of the wearer, but embody the socio-cultural conditions of the time [4].
Why Fleminger Hudson has a particular penchant for the 1970s, I don't know. Arguably, she might have tied her project to an earlier decade, or even the 1980s [5].
Perhaps because the 1970s were a uniquely transitional time; one that was marked "by a change in values and lifestyles" as "modern society and its cult of
authenticity gave way to a postmodernism based on reproduction and
simulacra" [6].
IV.
Whether we think of Fleminger Hudson's work as a form of theoretically-informed fantasy, or as magically-enhanced realism, doesn't really matter. Because either way, her images are fabulous, relaying a narrative that is truer than truth [7] and revealing more about the past than historical facts alone.
Portrait of the artist
Rachel Fleminger Hudson
Notes
[1] William E. Connolly, Political Theory and Modernity (Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. ix.
[2] See, for example, the interview with Gem Fletcher on wetransfer.com (8 July 2024), in which Fleminger Hudson says: "I think about the work as anti-nostalgic. Nostalgia, for me, is about being homesick for a distant past. I'm not homesick for the past because I exist in the material world of the 70s now through my relationship with objects."
[3] See the post on retrofuturism dated 10 June 2024 entitled 'I Wanna Live Yesterday Tomorrow': click here.
[4] On her website, Fleminger Hudson says that clothing is "an often overlooked symbolic language" and that one of her aims is "to engage with our psychological entanglement with our garments". Click here.
[5] Fleminger Hudson recognises this in the interview with Gem Fletcher on wetransfer.com (8 July 2024): "My work isn't a glorification of the 1970s. [...] In truth, I could be using any era."
[6] I'm quoting from a text on the Maison Européenne de la Photographie website showcasing some of Fleminger Hudson's work. She had her first solo exhibition at the MEP in 2023, curated by Victoria Aresheva, bringing together pictures from several different series of works. Click here.
[7] The Jewish proverb that suggests that stories (fables) are truer than the truth is one I first heard being spoken by the South American writer Isabel Allende in a TED talk (March 2007): click here.
As the artist declared, rather disappoitingly, in a Dazed magazine article (from which this piece seems in some measure derived or to be responding to), she actually seems to value the 70s in large part for its perceived anticipation of post-structural irony, telling its readers: ’I'm so intrigued by the 1970s because it’s the start of postmodernism. [...] It’s when things become kitsch but also start to take on double meanings and irony', though oddly she also seems preoccupied with creating 'meaning' through fashion and culture. Is this attempt to stand on one leg then the other Fleminger (Hudson's) attempt to replicate the practice of the water-dwelling bird on which her name appears to pun, one wonders?
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