Susan Stewart, On Longing:  Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the
Souvenir, the Collection, 1993, Duke University Press, 132-169.
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/bkg/tourist/Stewart-longing.pdf

How to Take Great Tourist Photos in New York City.
http://www.nyip.com/ezine/outdoors/new-york.html
Photographing People on Location
http://www.danheller.com/tech-tourism.html
Travel photography
http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/category/travel-photography/

Please bring to class a souvenir and/or photograph as a basis for discussing the role of memory in tourism and the memory practices of tourists, your own included! If possible, please upload images to the blog (and for that matter images of your souvenir, if you can).

Recommended

Appadurai, A. ed. (1986) The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Attfield, J. (2000) Wild Things: The material culture of everyday life, Berg: Oxford.

Fullagar, S. (2002) ‘Narratives of travel: desire and the movement of feminine subjectivity’ Leisure Studies 21 (1): 57-74.

Gordan, B. (1986) ‘The souvenir: Message of the extraordinary’, Journal of Popular Culture 20 (3): 135-146.

Goss, J. (2004) ‘The Souvenir: Conceptualising the Object(s) of Tourist Consumption’, pp. 327-336 in A. A. Lew, C. M. Hall and A. M. Williams (eds) A Companion to Tourism, Oxford: Blackwell.

Hobson, P., Timothy, D. J. and Youn-Kyung, K. (2004) Special issue: Tourist shopping, Journal of Vacation Marketing 10(4).

Jansen-Verbeke, M. (1998) ‘The synergy between shopping and tourism’, pp.428-446 in W. Theobald (ed.) Global Tourism, Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann.

Lury, C. (1997) ‘The objects of travel’, pp.75-95 in C. Rojek and J. Urry (eds) Touring Cultures: Transformations of Travel and Theory. New York: Routledge.

Kwint, M., Breward, C. and Aynsley, J. (eds.) (1999) Material Memories: Design and Evocation, Berg: Oxford.

MacCabe, S. (2002) ‘The Tourist Experience and Everyday Life’, pp. 61-76 in G. Dann (ed.) The Tourist as a Metaphor of the Social World, CABI, Oxford.

Noy, C. (2004) This Trip Really Changed Me. Backpackers’ narratives of self-identity. Annals of Tourism Research 31 (1): 78-102.

O’Reilly, C. C. (2005) Tourist or Traveller? Narrating Backpacker Identity, in A. Jaworski and A. Pritchard (eds.) Discourse, Communication and Tourism, Clevedon: Channel View.

Rogan, Bjarne. An Entangled Object: The Picture Postcard as Souvenir and Collectible, Exchange and Ritual Communication. Cultural Analysis 4 (2005): 1-27.

Shenhav-Keller, Shelley. The Israeli souvenir: Its text and context. Annals of Tourism Research 20, 1 (1993): 182-196.

Wang, N. (2002) The Tourist as Peak Consumer 281-296 in G. Dann (ed.) The Tourist as a Metaphor of the Social World, Oxford: CABI.

This picture is from a recent trip to Chichen Itza in Mexico; I am the one in the photo and my fiance is the photographer.

This photograph is a representation in miniature, a reference point for the narrative of my life. It is also one of a series of photographs that are organized by the order in which they were taken. When you come back from a week-long trip, people inevitably ask, "how was it" , or maybe they skip that and go right to "did you take picutures?" Rarely did I talk about the trip as a whole without using the series of pictures to tell my story. "This is when we first arrived," and "this is when we went to Chichen Itza," etc. Each frame invokes a commentary, and their chronological presentation is essential to anchoring the narrative in time. We can visualize our occupation of another space represented by the pictures, which is made possible by our understanding of the passage of time. The story gives the photograph its authenticity, fleshing out the parts beyond its finite boundaries and filling in the remaining four senses that were not captured, but the photo and its boundaries can also exerts its power on the story. This photograph in particular can become an aesthetic scene divorced from its context as my desktop background; it references my trip to Mexico, but can also be ahistorical, as Stewart discusses, once perhaps it is categorized aesthetically.

One final point, the photo exists, whether I am talking about it or not, but it changes meaning depending on who is looking at it, and the context of their viewing, what Appadurai describes as the social life of things. Now it means something in a discussion of tourist productions, and can be associated with a new set of images that have been posted on this blog. It creates a new reference point for a narrative I can tell about taking this course, and its life will continue as its meaning is reshaped over time.

Here are the pictures of my last birthday party at Lips restaurant http://www.lipsnyc.com/, a famous restaurant which combines cuisine and drag show at Greenwich.

I have held a similar affect towards my festival badges- some with photo, some with just my name handwritten- which also admitted me to restricted places: quasi-sacrosanct parties, roundtables, screenings and dinners at exclusive venues, or even access through barricades (at a festival in Oaxaca last year that took place in the midst of a teacher’s sit-in). Why do I keep the badges?

Now in New York, alleged city of immigrants, I have taken note of how Latin American peoples are represented in the media and in museums. I sometimes photograph myself against there backdrops, to see how well I match the picture or whether I dispell the message simply by my presence. Am I a Latina in this country, or still a migrant/tourist snapping pictures?

American Museum of Natural History, 2002

This was taken at sunrise, but it was a bit cloudy at the time. Little did I know, later that day I would climb to the summit of the peak I was overlooking.

I arrived a bit late, and shortly after, the professor/owner/curator of the Museum, George Nelson Preston, Ph. D., entered, and came over to discuss a series of five masks mounted on stands, placed on a table against the wall. He first stated that these objects are incomplete, noting that they were representations of what were once part of elaborate living outfits consisting of many components. The outfit, the dances and rhythms that they were made for, and the ceremonies that utilized the outfits all carried the same name. There was not separate name for the object we were seeing on the table. (Perhaps this was his disclaimer for the lack of wall text and labels?) These entire outfits were once collected, he continued, but upon arriving in Europe they began to be compared to European standards of artistic materials, and as much of these outfits were made of organic materials, everything but the wooden mask part was discarded/devalued. The five masks were described to us as “variations on a theme”, and he noted the similar markings that signified cosmological and spiritual elements.

I was amazed. The professor was trying to give an adequate scholarly explanation of the objects that justified their decontextualized, aestheticized presentation. Also, he never positioned himself in the anamoly of displaying the masks in such a way, and never told us why he chose these masks in particular or if he was even the one who acquired them. Knowing what I do about the history of collecting, I had to ask, “How did these objects come to be in this museum?” His response was a steady and well-rehearsed monologue that went something like this:

Culture is fluid. It travels and moves like water. The impetus for its movement is economics. Money. Money is what makes these objects of culture travel. How did the Met and the Louvre get their collections? They had the money. $100 for a mask like this buys the carver/seller enough cement to build a house, and he can then just make another mask in its place. Or sell you a fake! It may seem crude, but the seller thinks it is a good deal. [Pause.] That is one answer. But that is the best answer.

I could not believe it! To state that was to really make some declarations about the origins of his art. However, the vagueness and removed quality of his narrative continued to set himself apart from the actual collection process of his own Museum pieces. Ironically, the Museum’s stated mission is:

“MoAAO is dedicated to the preservation and exposition of art in relation to its origins. MoAAO addresses the question what generates art? and endeavors to exhibit art in dialogue with its origin: culture-historical, environmental, ideological, medium/process.”

Interestingly, the origins of many of the objects we saw – and were told about – were NOT exposed. A country or ethnic group was the most specific he got. In thinking about the Museum in relation to its position in Harlem, Stewart’s chapter provides a useful framework.

The souvenir – as described by Stewart – is incomplete without its owner’s narrative that ascribes significance to the life of the object, which in turn signifies identification for the object’s possessor: “It will not function without the supplementary narrative discourse that both attaches to its origins and creates a myth with regard to those origins. …What is this narrative of origins? It is a narrative of interiority and authenticity. It is not a narrative of the object; it is a narrative of the possessor.” (Stewart 136) In this sense, I believe the objects in Mr. G.N. Preston’s Museum functioned in a way like souvenirs. However, they were of course his collection.

“While the point of the souvenir may be remembering, or at least the invention of memory, the point of the collection is forgetting – stating again in such a way that a finite number of elements create, by virtue of their combination, an infinite reverie….The spatial whole of the collection supersedes the individual narratives that ‘lie behind it.’” (Stewart 152, 153) The invention of culture, and the forgetting of each individual object’s history, is the modus operandi of the MoAAD’s display of “African Art.” However, the aesthetic presentation and valorization of these forms are supposed to be a way of instilling pride in African roots.

Nostalgia, desire, longing. These were all at play in the narrative Mr. Preston prescribed to his collection. In a sense, the objects also maintained an element of relic. Stewart writes, “Because they are souvenirs of death, the relic, the hunting trophy, and the scalp are at the same the most intensely potential souvenirs and the most potent antisouvenirs. They mark the horrible transformation of meaning into materiality more than they mark, as other souvenirs do, the transformation of materiality into meaning.” (Stewart 140, emphasis hers) The African mask at the MoAAO, as described by Mr. Preston, did function as relic because their meanings have been subsumed by their material and aesthetic forms, and the death of the mask’s life – as they are only fragments of what they had originally been, in context – turns into the life of the community museum, and the life of an imagined Africa for Harlem.

I am a collector. I save ticket stubs, emails, wrappers, clothing tags, those plastic bracelets that you have to cut off that you get for entrance to events/attractions, and memories in the form of photographs and extensive journal entries. I actively collect shot glasses, postcards, and quotations. I have boxes of keepsakes- random objects like a flattened ball of foil and a little troll doll with its hair cut off, and I save these things because of the stories they hold. I don’t trust my brain to remember, so I depend upon objects, journals, correspondence, and conversations with friends to “remember” my past meaningful experiences. Some objects I’ve kept for so long I don’t even remember their stories. I continue to hold on to them because they have become part of a collection, instead of a souvenir. It’s sometimes embarrassing the things I save, but I know I’m not the only one to imbue these items with significance. But when I think about what my favorite souvenirs are, they are stories. This is why the objects, photographs, and journals are so important— they help me remember important narratives of experiences where I saw unusual things, connected to different people or ate a memorable meal.

Stewart quotes Nelson Grayburn, “there is a cachet connected with international travel, exploration, multiculturalism, etc. that these [foreign exotic] arts symbolize” (148). I can’t deny that I have a certain pride in my ring from Mexico, the earrings I bartered for in Istanbul, and my glass necklace from an artisan’s small shop in Brittany. No matter how we might try to authenticate the objects we have, it can’t be ignored that by displaying them we are indicating our status, our means to travel. With my wearing or presenting of these objects, I’m seeking to stand out, be different, be recognized for my “special” experiences, but essentially I’m just making myself an other to those around me. No one understands the object or souvenir like the owner—there can never be a mutual understanding. My souvenirs “other” me.

I’m not a person that likes to take photos or collect souvenirs, for I don’t think these objects can really document the most important experiences during a trip. Besides, they have specific frames, such as the photo, and may exclude many other things important. But as I went back to see some photos I once took, or ate the souvenir foods of a specific place, they triggered many amazing memories and feelings – however, memories, what are these memories for – “the deepest secrets of the Self” as Locke proposes in the quotation? Perhaps.

** Elaine with the Wall Street Bull (with her admission to put this photo on the blog) -- It's the best shot of that day. Elaine, Eric, my boyfriend, and I went to the South Seaport as tourists during the Christmas time. Unlike any other tourists who stood aside the bull's head, she kneeled under it, and attracted a lot of flash light from other tourists.

** Elaine & Eric

** On the ferry to Staten Island with Lady Liberty

As this semester is coming to an end, I have been thinking about what ideas I have been attracted to in my classes this year. I realized the through line for me has been the potential temporal and spatial permeability between events. For this reason, I appreciated Stewart’s writing on the souvenir. She writes that one of the souvenir’s functions is to mediate the distance between the present and the original place/event. Through the narrative that surrounds the object, the past is invoked while remaining necessarily distant. “The souvenir generates a narrative which reaches only ‘behind,’ spiraling in a continually inward movement rather than outward toward a future.” (135)

Although the souvenir can produce mnemonic association, the accompanying narrative may override or substitute the memory. Maybe we have all experienced returning home and having everyone ask for our stories from afar. Some stories are a hit and are repeatedly told. The suitcase opens and the distribution of stories and objects begins. The pictures and objects provide additional sensorial references to the story- enabling friends and family to travel back with you. For me, I know that the stories that I have repeatedly told are more accessible to recall than my actual memory of the event. With this in mind, approaching the collection of souvenirs and the taking of pictures, could be considered a compositional choice in the arrangement of what will later become ‘memory.’

Collecting the souvenir is consuming the experience of the place, “the exotic object represents distance appropriated.” (147) When I was in Bali several years ago, I was the videographer for this festival for international performance artist. I remember feeling this moment of great turmoil when videoing this woman dancing. It became clear to me that something multidimensional was happening. Even though I had been asked to tape the whole event, my position as an outsider became intensified to the point of feeling paranoid about recording this dynamic situation. I turned off the camera and just watched. Later I got some grief from another American who was invested in me capturing that moment. It seemed too special. When filming something as documentation there is the recognition that it will be valued later, often in a different place. Stewart writes about the necessary distance and displacement for the souvenir (or documentation) to be a link to the past: “The souvenir must be removed from its context in order to serve as a trace of it.” (150) I realize that this impulse to shut off the camera was my discomfort with participating in the commodification of that event.

A photo and the story…
I took this picture in San Pedro, Guatemala (near Lake Atitilan). This man is the artist who made the small sculptures that are hanging behind him. I like this photo because it brings me back to the event. For many of these objects he enthusiastically described their cultural significance, mostly Mayan references. He also said that he sculpts things that he sees on TV, like a bust of Osama Bin Laden and a woman having an abortion!

The three combined collectively suggest, reminders of personal memories. It is less about the task of the buying of the object or the materialistic aspect of it, but more about the emotional response that overtakes us upon looking at it, holding it, and perhaps even smelling it. There is nothing more valuable in life then the ability to recapture, to cherish once again, and attempt to relive what we consider the most precious moments of our lives. This is the significance of the souvenir. Unfortunately the word itself tends to bring to mind tacky key chains and spoon collections, but again the importance seems to reach well beyond the object itself and much more to what the object triggers. It’s often said that we spend our lives creating memories, and so we need the means to have at our deposal at anytime, the capability to reach into our drawer of consciousness and pull out anyone of these past experiences when they are most needed. They inspire us, they validate our identity, they encourage us to understand where we’ve been in order to help determine where we’re going, and they are simply there to make us remember once again, because we so desperately want to. “Souvenir” is a word so easily dismissed, until we really sit down and realize how relevant it is, in all of it’s’ forms, to each one of our lives.
The taking of photographs is probably the most personal form of souvenir we collect. We strive to take that “perfect” picture that enables us to go home and recreate the story for our friends; with the perfection of the photo helping them relive and understand with us the significance of the experience. We long to capture that ultimate candid, the one that just spills emotion and whose lure is immediately identifiable for anyone. What can be ironic at times regarding photographic or film souvenirs are two things. The first being the high state of technology available to the photographer to enhance the picture in dozens of ways: speed, texture, black & white, etc. You would think that all of this technology and “work” would cut into the truly spontaneous aspect of capturing a moment. It often does. The other being a video camera. The discrepancy regarding video cameras is that they’re not able to portray entire experiences, nor are they able to capture the most distinct moments. They document a fragment of time; 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, mainly to insure we don’t miss something. More often then not, most of the images recorded become insignificant to us and what we actually end up doing is editing our own memories. Watching a video requires much greater involvement and patience for finding the moment or memory you are searching for. It has not the immediacy or simplicity that souvenir objects have. I have to admit; there is nothing more annoying then the people who spend their vacation experiencing it through a viewfinder. A sense of freedom and a sense of personal connection are lost when something is put in between. More time is spent recreating the memory then actually experiencing the creation of it.