On Longing

"The body is the primary mode of perceiving scale."

Although the waterfall in the image appears small, I remember looking up being terrified to jump because of how tall it was. I felt so small at the bottom of it, but when I was at the top getting ready to jump, I felt the same. It is odd how we can feel so small physically and mentally while being next to something or someone bigger. Whether it is a person's personality that seems more confident or louder than yours, or sitting at the bottom of a tall waterfall, how we perceive our size makes a difference on how we see ourselves and the world around us.




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

This is an image of a statue in the middle of a museum in Copenhagen, Denmark. The statue being in the middle of the museum gave it a feel of regality and importance. It made me feel like I was there to something important. I was looking to the statue for a glimpse of the past. Seeing many more statues like this one all throughout the museum forced me to think about that time period and what my life would be like if I had been alive for it.

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

In this image, I have several souvenirs that mean a lot to me, all bought in different places. I have two image a Picasso and a Klimt from my trip to Paris, a post card of Frida Kahlo from the MoMa in NYC, and a bottle of black pebbles from Iceland. All of these souvenirs bring me back to the moment I bought them or the experience that pushed me to buy them in the first place. For me, the two post cards from Paris bring me back to all the amazing art I saw and discovered, the post card from the MoMa was one of the first times my sister, parents and I got to go on vacation without my two younger brothers, and the pebbles from Iceland brings me back to the most amazing natural beauty I have ever experienced. Those pebbles were from the black sand beach there and we all woke up before sunrise to drive there. The sunrise was perfect beyond words and when I look at those pebbles, it reminds me of how surreal that experience was. Each of these souvenirs provokes a different feeling from within, a moment captured in the physical realm.

" To have a souvenir of the exotic, is to possess both a specimen and a trophy."

This is a photo of  a Picasso painting I took at the Picasso museum in Paris. I don't own this painting, but I did buy a poster of it at the gift shop because of how this painting in particular spoke to me. I hang it up in every room I have and make it the focal point on my wall. I treat it like it is the real deal and although you could probably buy the poster on Amazon or elsewhere, to me, the poster I have cannot be replicated.

"The place of origin must remain unavailable in order for desire to be generated."

This is a photo of a sunrise in Iceland on Black Sand Beach. It was the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen to this day. It cannot be replicated, it cannot be replaced by another although I try every time I go somewhere new. This sunrise will never happen again and that is what makes it so special and desirable to me. I will always be chasing this sunrise with each morning I see one, but it will never be the same.