Tiny – a Photo

Is there an absolute measure for size?  Or is everything relative?

I resist the idea of finding a photograph of a really small thing to respond to this weeks prompt.

Instead, here is a photo of ‘Maman’ by Louise Bourgeois outside the Guggenheim in Bilbao.  The scale of the sculpture of a spider with extraordinary long legs dwarves the people walking underneath it; and you can only appreciate its size by seeing it juxtaposed with the human form, the proportions of which you have an instinctive understanding.

The title for the work seems to me to be paradoxical, as a giant spider is the stuff of nightmare rather than the comfort of maternal care, although I have read that for Bourgeois it is an image of a vulnerable creature trying to protect its precious load of eggs.

Maman by Louise Bourgeois

Launched on the topic of motherhood though, here is my own more traditional image of my mother and me at my Christening when I was only a tiny baby.

Posted by rowena on May 22, 2011

https://rowenadunn.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/tiny-a-photo/