Much is said regarding a photographers’ role in creating their photographs. What choices did they make? Why did they take the picture? How realistic are the people or places it depicts? In most cases, it seems that the photographer takes a picture with the intent of delivering a specific message, or at the very least, with a particular audience in mind. This led me to wonder: why is photography such a staple of traveling? Why do tourists take pictures like their life depends on it? I do this as much as anyone, and having been fortunate enough to have experienced some interesting travels in the last year, with more ahead of me this summer, I found myself thinking about what it is exactly that I am trying to capture when I take pictures of other places, and why. Although this compulsion feels natural, photography has hardly been around for much of human history – and neither has tourism. I was curious to learn more about the history and connection between the two, as well as what value, if any, tourists’ photographs have for archives.
Everyone has seen photographs or drawings of notable sights around the world that pre-date the public accessibility of cameras and photography. Those who traveled in the 19th century often purchased photographic souvenirs from commercial vendors, because they were unable to take their own pictures (1). Clearly the impulse to return home with a tangible memory of sights seen has existed for a long time. Perhaps it is only natural that tourists would seize the opportunity to take their own photographs.
Postcard, Niagara Falls and Canada, 1911 (Museum Victoria)
Between 1890 and 1930, snapshot photography and mass tourism expanded simultaneously in the United States along with a general growth in consumer culture and mass production (1). Advertisements by Eastman Kodak and other companies linked picture taking to self-expression and encouraged consumers to make the most of their travels – including financially -- by reliving their journey through pictures that they had taken (1). This take on tourism and photography views the act of taking pictures as a way to illustrate one’s status as a consumer, and therefore class level, by displaying these images to acquaintances at home. By this reasoning, travel photographs are taken for others, aside from the photographer, to view.
Eastman Kodak advertisement, 1905
The fact that amateur photography and tourism emerged at roughly the same period in time may help explain their connection. It does not fully explain, however, the significance of photography for tourists in today’s world, where images of tourist destinations are ubiquitous and freely available at the click of a button. Research has shown that pictures can play a significant role in people’s choice of destination to visit (4). Yet this does not stop them from taking their own photographs once they are there. Perhaps it is important to tourists to be able to share photographs of places that they have seen personally, regardless of the availability of public photographs. Susan Sontag wrote that “to photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed,” suggesting that when tourists take pictures they are using their cameras to take control of the spaces they are visiting, and that this allays their anxieties about being present in an unfamiliar situation (3).
South Africa, Per-Anders Pettersson, New York Times (not a tourist, but like one might take)
In a sense, taking pictures allows a tourist to both feel a part of the local community, while also keeping a distance between them. Tourists routinely photograph the same kinds of subjects, even in places where far more variety exists. When a trip is taken to a location where more disturbing sights are found, those are often not photographed. “The tourist, by virtue of being a tourist, exemplifies a certain awareness….that an unattractive side of life exists. The tourist’s desire to travel perhaps arises…from just such a recognition, and the wish to overcome it” (2). In other words, taking pictures can be a way for tourists to make sense of what it is they are seeing in an unfamiliar place, by taking ownership of it and paring it down into manageable pieces. When tourists do take pictures of local residents, it is most often in photos that result in an “ethnographic bent,” taken in countries in Asia or Africa where the dress or lifestyle of some residents stands out as different from the West (5). These pictures capture both a significant difference between the subject and the photographer, and also a reinforcement of preconceived ideas.
Police Officers in Bogota, 2012, MW
Looking at my own pictures taken on a trip to visit a friend in Colombia last year, I can see that a majority of them are beautiful nature scenes. This is in part, of course, because it is a beautiful country and there was wonderful scenery to photograph. I do wonder, though, whether these pictures are based on a kind of standardized value of what is worth being photographed on a trip. There were many other interesting and unique things worth photographing, and yet the camera often did not come out for those. Maybe it’s true that I was attempting to create my own “narrative” about the country and cast it in a different light from the way it’s often viewed. I think, though, that when I take photos while traveling it is more in an effort to capture an indescribable feeling, and hold onto something that is particularly moving. I’m trying to photograph what I have actually seen, and not just what is in the guidebook – even when the two overlap. Most of all I feel that I take photographs in an attempt to remember everything that I have seen and done -- an attempt that inevitably ends years later with me remembering almost solely those spots or moments in which I took pictures.
Arrecifes Beach in Parque Tayrona, Colombia, 2012, MW
If tourists take photographs for personal meaning or social purposes, then what are the photographs’ values to the larger world? Looking at a small sampling of tourist photos in archives suggests that they are often part of collections for other reasons, and being a travel photo may be of secondary value. Although two snapshot albums from the New York Public Library – those belonging to Dewitt Clinton Falls and Edward Weidenbach – provide good examples of the way travelers took and used photographs (1), other tourist albums seem to be a part of archives for different reasons. In the Library of Congress’ collections, a souvenir album made in 1886 by artist Kate Williams, appears to be valued for its unusual and artistic merits as an illuminated album of European tourist sites. Another album entitled “Aids to Memory,” (certainly another likely reason for tourists’ photo taking) was created by a professional photographer, not a tourist, and depicts various sites in Washington D.C. Other tourist albums found in the National Archives are often part of an individual or family’s personal papers, and are there only by extension of this. It seems that tourist photographs are of most value when taken in context, and not as individual photos themselves. If they can show us something about the photographic forms (or bindings and albums) of their time period, or tell us something about travelers during a certain period of time, then they are providing useful information. Perhaps our own photographs do the same for us: reminding us of ourselves and our world in a different time.
References:
1. Snow, Rachel. “Tourism and American Identity: Kodak’s Conspicuous Consumers Abroad,” Journal of American Culture, 31:1, 2008.
2. Garlick, Steve. “Revealing the Unseen: Tourism, Art and Photography,” Cultural Studies 16:2, 2002.
3. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973.
4. Farahani, Banafsheh M. "Photograph, Information Search and Tourism Marketing," Asian Social Science, 7:7, 2011.
5. Good, Katie Day. "Why We Travel: Picturing Global Mobility in User-Generated Travel Journalism," Media, Culture and Society, 35:3, 2013.
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