PHOTOGRAPH titled "Not so big hu ?"
Originally uploaded by Fabien H
This photograph is a great example of the playful ways people interact with the Sydney Opera House. Souvenirs are often small awkward replicas of places, meant to help us remember the experience we had there. In this image their is a wonderful play on scale: has the opera house shrunk or has the viewer grown to giant proportions.
This image prompts me to think of Susan Stewart's work in On Longing, where she discusses the issue of scale and how it changes our perception and relationship to places and things. Its seems as though the souvenir in this case is a way of incorporating, that is making this extraordinary building, small and comprehensible and able to be brought into our ordinary worlds.
