People are inherently egotistical. Scared of an end that most have declared “nonexistent,” we try to document our existence and make it eternal. Diaries, letters or photographs are nothing but sparks ignited by the ultimate fear that our experience will someday be covered by the dust of oblivion. These testaments of existence and experience scream “I exist and there is proof!” In addition, our egotism spreads its wings in the magical middle kingdom between reality and imagination. Photographs, for instance, are given more credit than they deserve for documenting the naked truth. Although we have been conditioned to automatically assume that a photograph is an adequate representation of reality, on the contrary, it is a representation of the photographer’s reality, his world, his perception. It is quite paradoxical, therefore, to trust some prints to tell a story about experience. When an individual picks up a camera, he places a shield between him and the reality that is waiting for his touch. That never happens, however. This sad sight of people excusing themselves from reality is being increasingly seen as the tourist industry claws through any geographical altitude and longitude. Photographs, therefore, are tools used to experience inexperience and they are not reality, but mere photographic reality.
Tourists travel from one part of the globe to the other and invade new frontiers. It is an invasion because everywhere they go, they do not adapt to the place they are visiting, but rather expect the place to adapt to them. Apart from manipulating what they have seen, today we see these barbarians of modern times marching around these places of interest with the incomparable destructive tool: a camera. Tourists, therefore, instead of immersing themselves in the local culture and interacting with the natives, turn into puppets and selectivity becomes their puppet master. In her book On Photography, Susan Sontag writes how photography, in essence, is the act of non-intervention. The one who photographs does not take any action and the one who takes action metamorphoses into a subject matter for a print. It is incongruous, describes Sontag, how a photograph can be a way of limiting or shutting out experience, but also the tool of certifying experience, “…by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir.” The main problem tourists have with photography when they are visiting a place is that they let the camera dictate and confine their experiences to a crumble of exoticism which does not even encapsulate the essence of the visited place.
Nevertheless, photography remains the medium used en masse to tweak the reality of the visited places. Most of the time, this is done unintentionally. Reality can be tweaked through f/stops, composition, lighting, lenses, shutter speed, processing, et cetera. Gross and Shapiro have argued that “we interpret physical images in a way that fit’s a reestablished view of reality” and “the reconstructive process is influenced not only by our individual biases but also by the context in which the photograph is seen.” Thus, photographs let us lie to ourselves about reality and perception and they are a construction rather than a representation of a visited place. Reality can be reconstructed by changing the lenses, adopting a new eye level, changing the perspective of the photograph and then voila`, a new world has been created. This world is full of beautiful and ugly things, but with a camera, a photographer or an amateur photographer, can turn a duckling into a swan, and if the magic does not happen, he or she will just delete the picture.
Therefore, photography is not reality but alternately, an escape from reality.
The modern barbarians hide themselves behind the armor of photography and do not allow themselves to have an authentic experience of the place they are visiting. They show little particles of microscopic truth on how life is like in the countries that tourists will be visiting. Through them, countries are transformed, the original is turned into a photocopy, and nature is tamed. Photographs are powerful enough to create false notions on places not visited before and also powerful enough to paralyze the puppet that stands behind the camera.
Therefore, photography is not reality but alternately, an escape from reality.
The modern barbarians hide themselves behind the armor of photography and do not allow themselves to have an authentic experience of the place they are visiting. They show little particles of microscopic truth on how life is like in the countries that tourists will be visiting. Through them, countries are transformed, the original is turned into a photocopy, and nature is tamed. Photographs are powerful enough to create false notions on places not visited before and also powerful enough to paralyze the puppet that stands behind the camera.
