Paul Kubalek
Chelsea College of Arts and Design
MA Graphic Design Communications 2008
KUB06217602
The Tourist Gaze
‘If you really want your life to pass like a movie in front of you, just travel,
you can forget your life.’
Andy Warhol1
‘What is travel and what use is it? All sunsets are sunsets; there is no need
to go and see one in Constantinople.’
Fernando Pessoa2
Introduction
This work looks at the experience of travel and tourism in the 21st century. This interest
developed from questioning repetitive activities during my own travels, which included
taking hundreds of photos of well known landmarks every day and which seemed to make
less and less sense the more pictures I collected. Furthermore, observations of activities and
interests of other travellers were the starting point for the practise work that followed.
The premise can be summed up as the globalisation of tourism and its mass availability
alongside the increasing universalism of first analogue then digital photography.
This development has changed the relationship we have with the world from one
of experiencing difference to one of a series of geographic equivalents.
My practise is a set of two-dimensional souvenirs, like postcards or leporello booklets
picturing tourist activities such as taking pictures of one self or together with street
performers etc. The visuals contain non-descript shots, cut out from their background,
and extracted from the context they have been taken in. This makes tourism as an
experience a universally identical visual process of cataloguing: In the end one can purchase
the souvenirs before going on holiday - the activities at the destination will always be the
same, no matter where one will go to; the sights are no longer important, not even used
as a visual background for any activity carried out.
1
Warhol, Andy 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and back again),
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York and London
2
Dyer, Geoff 1995, Foreword to Parr, Martin: Small World, Dewi Lewis Publishing,
Stockport
2
This essay talks about leisure tourism, about the short periods people leave their work
and everyday environment in order to recreate, to see something else, to make holidays.
Why do people travel? Observing tourists’ activities, one may doubt that people’s
intentions for travel are always ‘useful’ or, indeed, if any of these activities could contribute
to gaining knowledge or experience on any level. There seems to exist a set of standardised
activities without any relation to social or historical background of the place where one
has been travelling to.
Historical development
In order to fully understand this it is necessary to look into the development of tourism
and travel and their background within capitalist societies.
Travelling to explore other cultures is an old phenomenon, primarily for the rich. Starting
in medieval times, religious pilgrimage was a reason for visiting distant places of worship.
Young aristocrats took ‘Grand Tours’ in the 17th century primarily for educational
reasons, but only since the 1840s did travel start to be of greater interest for a wider part
of European society. This was supported by an emerging middle class whose wealth allowed
the necessary time and financial resources to be able to travel. It became fashionable
to undertake travel simply for ‘recreational reasons’. With the expansion of the railway
networks and, after World War II, the extensive growth of air travel ‘holidays’ for leisure
purposes, travel became part of nearly everyone’s yearly life cycle. (see Tourism, Wikipedia)
In industrialised nations today, it is taken for granted that one will leave daily work behind
at least once a year in order to go to a distant place.
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Digital age
The fact that tourism and photography are so strongly connected, not only because of their
rise at the same time, have to be taken into account when discussing the motives of
tourists. Photography records travel experiences, but the photographs shown to people
at home also create the desire to visit places seen in the images. ‘Part of the motive for
travelling is to experience the photographs on site, in the real’ (see Dyer 1995). Spots
to visit are chosen because of their value as photographic landmarks. A walk through
a city or rather tourism in general becomes in effect a search for the photogenic, ‘travel
is a strategy for the accumulation of photographs.’ (Urry 1990, 139 f)
Since the beginning of industrialisation, an ever accelerating process of transportation and
communication became established. Photography became part of this process. ‘It lowered
the price of images and thus increased their consumption.’ (Osborne 2000, 9) But not only
becoming the promise to exchange the representation for the real, the copy for the original,
the photographic image itself became the cause of/and effect within social and cultural
worlds. (see Osborne 2000, 11)
Recent decades have seen a tremendous increase in image production and consumption
through the invention of digital photography and distribution. More and more people
can afford to travel, not only western people to gaze upon the ‘exotic’ east, more and more
Asians generate a strong desire to see ‘for themselves’ those places of the west. Although
this seems to create an infinite desire for pleasure travel – and indeed the number
of travellers is still increasing – the reasons become more and more social rather than
simply recreational ones. Families have relatives or friends spread over many countries.
Travel becomes necessary to maintain social relations.
From a single tourist gaze in the 19th century there has been a shift to countless discourses,
forms and embodiments of tourist gazes now. John Urry speaks about the globalisation
of the tourist gaze. (see Urry 2001)
Real/authentic versus fake/not authentic
One of the discourses of the tourist gaze is the question of what is real/fake, authentic/not
authentic or ‘valid/invalid’. Take, for example, a landmark like the London Eye observation
wheel. Though it is difficult to get on the wheel at particular times, e.g. sunny days
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or weekends, people queue for a long time to get to see London’s other landmarks,
including the Houses of Parliament, St Paul’s Cathedral or ‘The Gherkin’. This seems
to be a ‘valid’ activity, fascinating and educational at the same time. It gives the viewer
the feeling of having some kind of an overview of the city he has traveled to.
By contrast, right beside the wheel, along the Southbank, a lot of different street performers
and so-called-acrobats play their games – and attract seemingly as many spectators
as the marvellous vista offered by the wheel. The actors’ stillness contrasts starkly with
the bustling activity typical for the place.
So which one of the two above gazes is the more ‘important’ one, the unique overview
of the city, or the rather the exchangeable spectacle of the actors? They can be found close
to nearly every landmark; at least throughout Europe.
The answer seems not possible, or better, perhaps the question is not valid.
Peter D. Osborne distinguishes between the ‘authentic’ and the ‘pseudo’ experience.
He suggests the search for both are tourist activities (see Osborne 2000, 73) – and
it is not possible to divide between ‘pseudo-tourists’ and authentic ones. The same
visitor might be attracted by both.
Tourism is a set of activities, followed consciously by the travelling individuals. John Urry
defines the term of the post-tourist as a phenomenon of postmodernity. He is in search
for the authentic as well as the inauthentic. To visit a historic spot is as valid as to see
Disney World, as an example of a pseudo-attraction. The post-tourist is aware of the fact
that he consumes a pseudo-attraction. (see Urry 1990, 100)
Furthermore, the photographing of well known landmarks itself – like London’s Tower
or Big Ben – is questioned. The photo exists infinitely: it is the number-one-postcardmotive. And still, the passerby takes this shot again, captures it for himself. It is a kind
of conquering – Photography and tourism work as ‘meta-systems which permit us to
transform something experienced or endured into something contemplated, something
looked on, something consumed, something personal. They enable us to possess
something.’ (MacCannell 1976, quoted in Osborne 2000, 75)
Tourists and their sights exist in order to be photographed; indeed are photographed
in order to attain their existence. [...] The excitement at finally seeing a longfamiliar attraction [...] is like the pilgrim arriving at the origin of an image. [...]
If this image has an origin, there is truth in the world. (Osborne 2000, 72).
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The photographer Martin Parr features tourists taking photographs in some of his works.
(see Parr 1995, 2007) In some of his photos images of other tourist sites appear. Things are
transforming into images of themselves. Nothing is where it’s supposed to be. Everything
signifies everywhere else. The tourist never quite arrives, never completely connects. Each
sight is interrupted by the signifiers of other sights. Every sight signifies all other sights
in the system of sights, most still lacking our visit. (see Osborne 2000, 72).
Everything is being turned into photographs by the tourist, conquered for himself in this
way of seeing. Each thing or person photographed becomes equivalent to the other, equally
interesting or uninteresting. ‘Barthes notes that photography began with photographs
of the notable and has ended up making notable whatever is photographed.’ (Roland
Barthes quoted in Urry 1990, 139) Every spot has turned into a potential tourist spot.
Travel to escape the world
The aspect of the tourist not really connecting seems also worth considering. The world
of the tourist experience is a bubble, secluded from the social reality of the country and
people they are travelling to.
‘Separation is the price you pay for not having to work in them [the maintaining
of the gaze]’. In this case Geoff Dyer speaks about the ‘view’ as a product of separation
of leisure and labour. This view is improved by the sight of people toiling in its midst,
actively engaged in its creation and preservation. ‘You have to be a stranger to the
landscape to regard it as a view. […] This view is available to everyone – except the
people who are employed to maintain it.’ (see Dyer 2003, 55)
This thought puts gazing at a view on location on the same level as looking at a picture
in a magazine or movie on TV at home. Therefore, there would not be much more
separation from the local people than if actually being there.
The post-tourist does not have to leave his or her house in order to see many
of the typical objects of the tourist gaze, with TV and video all sorts of places can
be gazed upon. […] It is possible to imagine oneself ‘really’ there. [...] The typical
tourist experience is anyway to see named scenes through a frame, such as the hotel
window, the car windscreen or the window of the coach. (Urry 1990, 100)
Baudrillard [...] insists that there is no beyond that travel can take us to and there
is no higher order of experience or material form that aesthetic practise can offer
or separate cultural space in which it can dominate. The real, he tells us, now
coincides with its image. (Osborne 2000, 190)
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So no use for travel at all? He continues then
to value the use of travel as a method for producing a more emphatic apprehension
of the world’s independence, its physical otherness that culture never entirely
absorbs – the strangeness and ecstasy of things. (Osborne 2000, 190)
Furthermore Baudrillard puts travelling and photography on one level.
Photography is not merely an aid to travel, rather it is itself ‘a kind of traveling’,
a process of self-departure, of ‘acting-out’ [...] It’s a way of escaping oneself,
of being elsewhere, a form of exoticism too. [...] It’s not really the image that
I produce ... rather it’s this kind of activity.
(Baudrillard, quoted in Osborne 2000, 191f)
And indeed, observing travellers taking photographs, most of them are acting in a kind
of ‘bubble’, they don’t want to be disturbed in their activities, no matter what they do.
They are on holiday and don’t want their experience to be affected by any kind of reality
other than the one that fits into their romantic imagination of place or situation they are
currently in. Even more, the camera in front of a person exploring a place functions like
a wall against reality, it becomes nearly impossible to experience what is really going on.
Heidegger [...] insists that technology (and this would include the camera) functions
to arrange the world so as to avoid experiencing it. (Osborne 2000, 75)
Another aspect is the reality of fast-paced, capitalist societies. There is a need for
‘recreation’, for getting away from one’s stressful, every day work, from the bad news on
the media – which would be there at the visited place as well. Travel is regarded as a kind
of desirable pleasure, a kind of romantic experience which satisfies our taste for novelty
(see Urry 1990, 90)
It’s not just black and white
Taking into consideration that ‘tourism is a game, or rather a whole series of games with
multiple texts and no single, authentic experience’ (Urry 1990, 100); that travellers are
different in origin, gender, age and with multiple interests, it seems invalid to judge
a tourist’s activity as right or wrong. Reading theory as well as asking friends for their
interests during travel shows that there are an indefinite set of activities and interests which
occludes the possibility of categorising tourism.
Furthermore, it seems relevant that the reason of travelling and therefore interests and
activities are shifting in a globalised world in which families and circles of friends are spread
7
not just over countries but continents. World Tourism Organisation statistics show that
in 2001 there were 154 million international arrivals for ‘visiting friends and relatives [...]’
travellers, compared with 74 million in 1990. [...] In 1990 there were five times more
‘leisure, recreation and holidays’ tourists than ‘visiting friends or relatives’ tourists;
but by 2001 this reduced to a little more than twice as many (WTO 2005).
(see Larsen/Urry/Axhausen 2006, 245) [...]
Recent work has begun to challenge the traditional distinctions between home
and away, the ordinary and the extraordinary, work and leisure, everyday life and
holidays, by arguing that in transnational times tourism moves into less obvious
touristic places. (Larsen/Urry/Axhausen 2006, 248)
Franklin and Crang argue that:
Tourism is no longer a specialist consumer product or a mode of consumption:
tourism has broken away [...] to become a significant modality through which
transnational modern life is organised (Franklin and Crang quoted in
Larsen/Urry/Axhausen 2006, 248).
Under such circumstances, theory even speaks of the ‘end of tourism’ as we know it
(see Urry 2001, Conclusion). It seems valid to question, but not condemn the activities
of travellers. One should be aware of the reasons of his travels and the activities carried out.
To start a reflection on one’s travel activities, this is the purpose of my practise. Suggesting
souvenirs without any relation to a place where one has been travelling to should start
a process of dialogue with the viewer.
In a world of global warming and a social environment of seemingly infinite consumerism
it must be valid to question practises like the inconsiderate choice of a far away destination
for the reason of a cheap offer; or polluting the atmosphere through air travel for the sake
of shopping on a foreign city’s high street which contains the same shops as the next city
in the home country.
However, there is a counterpoint to this argument that in fact contemporary leisure travel
in general is not a useless activity just to distract people from their every day realities:
Travel will never lose its value and right. Peter D. Osborne says, ‘travel and creative practise
are frequently inseperable.’ (see Osborne 2000, 193) The desire to be elsewhere and
to constantly find new impressions and influences is inspiring for everyone. He even
justifies the interaction of photography and travel:
8
The photographic image continues to play the part in the extension and
reinforcement of the global economy and culture it was given at its inception.
Yet, in alliance with types of travelling, it remains one of the means of challenging
this order. [...] The traveller-photographer may seek to emphasise the shocking
and ‘irreducible otherness’ of the world and confront viewers with the particularity
of their own responses. (Osborne 2000, 193)
Czeslaw Milosz says, to travel the world means to celebrate the existence of things,
by which he means objects and phenomena [...], it is to confirm and celebrate a free
and autonomous human existence passed in a material world indifferent to humans.
To embrace things is to embrace one’s humanity. (Osborne 2000, 194)
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Bibliography
Barthes, Roland 1981: Camera Lucida, Vintage-books, London
Dyer, Geoff 1995, Foreword to Parr, Martin: Small World, Dewi Lewis Publishing,
Stockport
Dyer, Geoff 2003: Yoga for people who can’t be bothered to do it, Abacus, London
Larsen/Urry/Axhausen 2006: Networks and Tourism, Mobile Social Life, Annals of Tourism
Research, Vol. 34, No. 1, Elsevier Ltd., GB
Osborne, Peter D. 2000, Travelling light: photography, travel and visual culture, Manchester
University Press, Manchester and New York
Parr, Martin 1995, 2007: Small World, Dewi Lewis Publishing, Stockport
Urry, John 1990, The Tourist Gaze: leisure and travel in contemporary societies, Sage,
London
Urry, John 2001, Globalising the Tourist Gaze, Department of Sociology, Lancaster
University, Lancaster
2008, Tourism [online], Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Available from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism [Accessed: 10.10.2008]