On Longing

 

"The body is the primary mode of perceiving scale"

I chose this picture for this quote, because when I took it, i was trying to convey how enormous this aquarium was to those that I sent the photo to and as a memory for myself. This was taken when I visited the aquarium in Atlanta, Georgia; the largest in the country and one of the largest in the world. The only way that one can grasp the size of the aquarium is from the size of the bodies of the people standing in front of it, and perhaps by the size of the bodies of the fish inside it. 

"Capacity of objects to serve as traces of authentic experience"

With the second quote I was reminded of this picture I took of my birthday cake last year. we had only put in one candle, because we had not felt like searching for nineteen of them. This made me think of how we use the objects of candles to represent years of our lives; and how each year is just a collection of experiences.

"The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and the three-dimensional into the miniature, that which can be enveloped by the body"

This quote made me think of this picture I took while picking blackberries with my mom one afternoon in Deland. The experience of spending time with her all day and the location of the activity were all reduced to and represented by that basket of fruit. This was then enveloped by the body-consumed. The filter on the bottom also shows that I had posted this on Snapchat, which is viewed on mobile devices, and therefore the experience is enveloped by the hands and eyes of others.

"Nostalgia cannot be sustained without loss"

This image is a picture that I took at the music museum in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. This room and many others housed outfits and other artifacts from famous musical artists that have already passed away. People pay to enter the museum and experience the nostalgia of the music and the creators of that music that have been lost. 

"to have a souvenir of the exotic is to posses both a specimen and a trophy"

I recently ate at the new Jollibee restaurant in Jacksonville. Jollibee is a Filipino fast food chain, with only a handful of locations in The United States. I am half Filipina, so I had gone to try this one. I took pictures of the food and tasted to serve as a specimen that represents the entire chain, which is considered rare and exotic here. I also sent the pictures to a few people to show that I had gone to it; making this image function also as a trophy.