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

Memories & Experience

Overwhelmed by the seemingly never-ending appearance of buildings, I stared quite wonderingly out of the window of my airplane. What a city. After obtaining my visa and collecting my luggage I stepped out of the airport and had my first proper interaction with a local. One must know, as background information on myself, that I never seek the dispensable western comfort in exchange for tourist prices. I have slept in 1$ dorm rooms in Asia, have eaten – and sometimes also regretted eating – from the most poor-looking streetfood stalls around the world and sat many times in vans and busses crowded with locals, regardless of the hassle. Consequently, I did not take a taxi to the city centre but the bus that cost me around 3JD and a bit of interpretation effort, as the man who sold me the ticket proceeded talking to me in Arabic. After encountering and successfully overcoming the same situation with the taxi driver I finally reached the hostel and got a good night of sleep (aka Lukas vs. Mosquitos). On the agenda for the first day was a continuance of what I experienced during the approach for landing, the evening before; staring. Tourism, be it a weekend-trip to the city close-by or a backpacking adventure in rural Cambodia, is always connected to seeing things – gaze at them, as John Urry named it. I was overwhelmed by the endlessness of the city and looked, as Urry “at the environment with interest and curiosity”. (Urry, 1990) Retrospectively, I can explain my excitement with Urry’s words; gazing is conditioned by memories and experience, as it is not much elaborated in depth, I imply the following: we connect what we gaze upon to what we’ve seen and experienced before. Our connection and therewith also our reaction to what we look at depend on how this fits into our history of seeing things, of experiencing things. I personally have seen many wonders of nature, astonishing landscapes and such. But as someone who rather skips metropolis, looking at the vast and vivid city of Amman, coupled with the excitement of being in an Arabic country, brought up the feeling of joy I had while gazing upon the hills and buildings.
LLM

Urry, J. (1990). The tourist gaze. London: Sage Publications.

Man sliding down the rail, Amman No end in sight