On Longing

"Nostalgia cannot be sustained without loss."

          This is was a picture is of my and all the friends I had in middle school. I was homeschooled, and they all went to public school. They were outcasts and didn't have many/any friends either, so we all got along and were all each other had. When high school came around, though, they all got new friends, while I went to an online school. So I pretty much lost everyone. They were still around, but they had other priorities, and I'd often miss the days when we hung out. 

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

          This project has really shown me how few pictures I really have that aren't just group photos of me and my family. However, last summer I went to London for the first time, and my cousin had the idea to try and hold the London Eye from across the Thames, so we all got together and took a bunch of photos like this. It came to a point, though, that every time we saw the Eye we'd take a photo of video of us holding or squishing the Eye with our hands from a distance. 

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

          This was taken, same as the previous picture, during my trip in London last summer. It was one of the last days, and my cousin, Grace, and I decided that our absolute favorite attraction was St. Paul's Cathedral, and we really wanted to climb it again. So all the little specks you see in little curved rows on the left side of the circle are all people sitting in pews. This was about halfway to the top of the church.

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

          This was taken outside the Royal Albert Hall in London. The Royal Albert Hall is where the 25th Anniversary Edition of the Phantom of the Opera was recorded, which happens to be my favorite musical. I was so excited when my cousin and I stumbled upon it that I had to take this picture. We went in for a tour, but it was too late in the day. So instead we put it as the first thing to do tomorrow. It seemed like something really special and different, in part because it took some patience to get to.

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

          This is from the Disney trip freshman year at Flagler. I'd never been to Disney before, but I'd seen the commercials of the little girls running up to the castle, and I thought getting to go into a castle seemed really cool. I was a little disappointed when there was a wall blocking me from it, and security standing guard, but it was still neat to see.