Photography & Tourism

Photography and tourism are strongly connected. The camera has since its beginning been an integral part of the tourist and the more technology advances, the more ways of capturing moments are created. But why do we feel like we have to take pictures? I had my Nikon D5100 with me on this trip and took 1176 pictures. I used them to show my friends and parents what I’ve seen and I thought they present a very objective way to document my trip, as they show the reality, unfiltered. However, as Berger (1972) points out, this is not completely true. Photography makes us chose our image, we give objects a meaning by portraying them the way we want to. We try to take the most authentic pictures and the result may then be something we put together and that was not there in that way. That means that the views that we show our friends have been constructed (Gombrich, 1960). One interesting development is the difference between taking pictures in the past and now. Larsen (2008) noted that while analogue photography was for the future, as you had to wait for the printed pictures, digital photography is for the now. The pictures are immediately available and ready to be shared with friends via social media sites. This interesting development in photography changed the way we choose the objects we want to frame. We now tend to make a snapshot of everything, a phenomena I could observe during our trip. Photography is connected to the tourist gaze. We point our cameras towards the object we gazed upon and capture a picture that is as constructed as our own thoughts while gazing. Photography makes up a big part of being a tourist, of proving that you have been here and there. It is also highly emotional, as they are a mean of reminding you of the amazing time you had.

LLM

Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin.
Gaertner, J. and Gombrich, E. (1960). Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Books Abroad, 34(4), p.364.
Larsen, J. (2008). Practices and Flows of Digital Photography: An Ethnographic Framework. Mobilities, 3(1), pp.141-160.


Taking pictures at Jerash

Trying to capture the perfect shot at Petra