Using five sentences describing human nature and its regard to things as mementos and miniature memories of events, I selected 5 photos taken at various moments of my path to illustrate the different passages.
“The body is the primary mode of perceiving scale.”
The photo is a very literal take on the sentence’s subject matter; I’ve taken a photo of my hand in frame of a pancake to document the size of it with something familiar. We use the body to show the sizing of something, because it is the only true universal form of measurement. Everyone theoretically knows the size of the average hand, and we can use this to our advantage when there is no ruler at hand.
“The souvenir exists as a sample of the now distant experience, an experience in which an object can only evoke and resonate.”
The photo depicts me, standing in the snow for my very first time. Being born in Florida, it took a total of 18 years before I was finally able to see snow, and because of this, the memory is very special to me. I chose this image for this specific sentence because now that the snow is gone, and I’m no longer North where I can see the snow, it is nothing more than a memory that evokes emotion. I can’t experience it whenever I want, unless I settle for the feelings I had when I was there.
“The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and the 3D into the miniature that which can be enveloped into the body.”
With this photo, there were a lot of emotions in this moment, because it was my first time going to a concert together with one of my best friends, it was my first kpop concert, and it was also my first time traveling to attend a concert. The feeling of being in the concert venue, despite being a little ways away from the stage was breathtaking. The atmosphere, the people there and the experience were beyond my expectations, and now whenever I look at that lightstick on my shelf, I’m reminded of the night and the warmth fills me. This is why I’ve chosen this image for the quote above.
“Nostalgia cannot be sustained without loss.”
The photo above depicts me and my father from a long time ago, when I was little. I picked this photo for the sentence because my father and I were never really close, and not long after this photo he was no longer in my life. I don’t hold a grudge, but I do hold a lot of mixed emotions for him that have never been resolved, and so I often find myself thinking about him in passing. Though he hasn’t passed away, he is a stranger to me, and though he lives in the same state I haven’t seen him in years. I feel an overwhelming sense of loss because of this, surprisingly.
“To have a souvenir of the exotic is to possess both a specimen and a trophy.”
I thought a long time about what photo to use for this quote, and struggled to define the word “exotic.” My mind thought luxurious and refined, even expensive when I thought of the word, so I interpreted it with the opposite. Depicted above is an alarmingly shaped potato, somewhat resembling an animated head. I thought this could be representative of the exotic specimen, wielded by my cousin as she cut fries as if it were a trophy of war.
