I happened to stumble upon (literally – I was using the new StumbleThrough feature of StumbleUpon) this wonderful Flickr collection. In this set, Michael Hughes captures a variety of popular tourist sites and superimposes souvenirs in photo in situ. What a neat concept. I am sure this opens up all sorts of wonderful questions for the representationalists…it reverses the normal memory process, by physically inserting memory into the present scene to create a representation of memory itself. Its almost a form of memory feedback. In this case, the kischier the better and possibly the less realistic the initial imposed memory object, the more memorable the subsequent artifact actually becomes. Its kind of twisting truth in on itself. I’ll have to think about this one some more.
The photographers idea (and there may have actually been earlier inspiration for him) has sparked a whole series of inspired works in Flickr. Searching for Michael Hughes finds a variety of pics his concept has inspired.
