Staging Analog Nostalgia in Nicaraguan Photography: Margarita Montealegre’s Sajonia (Despertar la memoria)

In this article, I analyze Margarita Montealegre’s photographic series Sajonia (Despertar la memoria) (2017–ongoing). I employ the lens of “analog nostalgia,” a concept developed by Laura U. Marks, to focus on her practice of using digital tools to rephotograph analog pictures. The series utilizes family photographs depicting Montealegre’s childhood in the Sajonia neighborhood in Nicaragua in the 1960s, superimposed on present-day photos. I argue that the absence of images from the intervening period is key to understanding Montealegre’s radical gesture and the narrative she constructs about the relationship between Nicaragua’s past and present, memory and reality, history and progress.