Las Vegas isn't the only city adorned with architectural replicas. Today, you can admire the London Bridge near Shanghai, visit St. Peter's Basilica in Côte d'Ivoire, or take selfies with one of China's Eiffel Towers. These large-scale copycat monuments can seem like mirages conceived by clever real estate investors, but what do they say about imaginary geographies, modern tourism and globalized urban planning? Do they herald a world where travellers won't cross borders, or are they proof of heightened cultural exchange and new transnational identities? A captivating and poetic meditation, The Real Thing elegantly journeys from one corner of the globe to the next—capturing a strange postcard here, an unexpected slice of life there—and collects philosophical musings from the people who design and inhabit those places. It creates an intriguing mirror game that plays with the viewer's perception and reflects an unexpected image of the world.

The Real Thing

A smaller scale Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Elysées can be found just outside Shanghai; a copy of St. Peter’s in Rome can be found in Yamoussoukro, in the Ivory Coast: a journey over three continents to see the architecture of imitation, the uncanny world of the fake.