Site Seeing: Photographic Excursions in Tourism
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While some of the shots here are straight tourist photos, whether professional or personal, many comment more on sightseeing than on the sights. Tseng Kwong Chi has photographed himself at tourist meccas around the world, always wearing sunglasses, a Mao suit he found in a Montreal thrift shop, and a fake photo ID labeled “Visitor,” as in L’Arc de Triomphe, Paris (1983). But it seems his unease about must-see monuments is nothing new. Victor Hugo in his 1837 poem about the recently finished structure hypothesized that its true significance would emerge only in 30 centuries, when it was in ruins.
“Tourists dislike tourists,” theorizes anthropologist Dean MacCannell in his 1976 book The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. We aim to capture authenticity with our cameras yet worry that we’re not authentic ourselves. And our cameras out us as nonnatives. “For moderns, reality and authenticity are thought to be elsewhere,” writes MacCannell. Shooting other sightseers instead of the sights expresses a humorous self-consciousness about tourism, perhaps rerouting some anxiety about it. I’d rather understand what I’m doing somewhere than try to understand what’s there.
