It probably doesn’t come as a huge surprise that tourists are amongst the most reviled subgroups of human beings. Butchering languages, crowding up local spots, snapping photos without permission and dropping a few offensive comments along the way, f…
When I was researching biennials, I was interested most of all in the fact that in some cases, the locals aren’t thrilled at the arrival of the biennial event. Often the biennials are not held regularly enough to be economically helpful to local individuals and families. Additionally, the tourists sometimes do not melt into the local lifestyles always, which can cause disruption and conflict. I thought primarily about how western culture seeps into the cracks in other cultures and invade over time, in some ways that are obvious and in some more subtle ways as well. I outlined one obvious way in my post about McDonalds, in which MD is infiltrating Beijing and elsewhere and the CEO’s put McDonalds restaurants in poor areas and affect local businesses and contribute to the overall westernization of the area.
I came across this photo series entitled “Fucking Tourist” by Nicolas Demeersman and it made me think of how we travel to places and often irritate and offend local people. Demeersman talks to the subject of his portrait prior to taking it in order to discuss local culture and feelings toward tourists in the area. With the portraits often come a snippet of the conversation that led to the taking of the photo. In every photo, the subject is flipping off the camera, or actually tourists.
The series exhibited at the Galerie Geraldine Banier in Paris last month.
So I thought I was done posting on tumblr, but apparently its a bit addictive. This piece really makes me think about JR's work as we've discussed it this term. JR, as well as many other photographers, seems to take photos of people that are somehow meant to speak to the human condition, or make us feel deeply moved about the interconnectedness of the world. Its a calculated aesthetic that we often see in national geographic magazine and in other travel-based photography. This series seems to poke fun at this mentality. The photos have every element of the type of photography I'm referencing, except for the subjects' rude gestures. This series also called attention to me some of the old, ethnographic photo compilations I've stumbled across over the years. In a way, this throws into light the idea that although compiling ethnographic photography anthologies is no longer viewed in the way it once was (e.g. not acceptable) the opportunity for this role to be taken up by tourists is perfectly available. These photos really call attention to how we like to typify people through the imagery we record of them in a way that seems to divorce them from their individuality. To take an ethnographic, tourist shot is to try and say something about an entire culture with an easy to digest image that will seem highly "local" to the folks at home. Although it's fun to take pictures when you travel, it's important to think about the fact that you are still photographing people you don't know in order to make certain conclusions about your experience of their culture. I tried to reverse the situation in my head: What would American tourists think of people taking tourist pictures of them in their own country? This got me thinking about how this doesn't seem to happen all that much, and that this is probably due to the fact that citizens of western, first world nations can more readily afford leisure travel. Do we play out the continued history of colonialism when we snap our local shots abroad?
