In the country it is much easier to reminisce on pasts not ours, of simple or traditional times, even if we have no personal memories to be nostalgic for. It is a shared or cultural nostalgia, one tied to the very earth, personified in the nature and animals around it, and in the minds of its inhabitants.
Photographs are quite like memories, both are idealized and are never complete representations. Perhaps the photograph is the essence of bringing the nostalgia, allowing us some glimpse of a life lived before us, among our family line or in familiar and appropriated stories.