Donald Horne uses a hepful metaphor to open The Great Museum. He describes the normal behaviour of the devotees of a particular cult. These devotees are in fact tourists who as he says “are trying to imagine the past.” 1 Photography is related to tourism inasmuch it makes the tourist’s experience real, according to Horne: “...;by photographing a monument, we make it real. It also offers us the joys of possession,...” 2 . His theory is based on the idea that the tourist’s camera defines the tourist’s experience, establishes the definitions of reality according to this experience and gives the tourist the chance to own the space and time where and when the tourist is tourist, as no other mean has been able to do before. As Susan Sontag says “To collect photographs is to collect the world” 3 and “To photograph is to appropiate the thing photographed.” 4 The tourist becomes a tourist as much as he/she is able to possess the photographed, which becomes the landscape, historical site or cultural icon once is photographed. 1 Donald Horne, The Great Museum: The Re-presentation of History (London: Pluto Press Limited, 1984), p. 1. 2 Donald Horne, The Great Museum: The Re-presentation of History (London: Pluto Press Limited, 1984), p. 12. 3 Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin Books, 1979), p. 3. 4 Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin Books, 1979), p. 4.
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Donald Horne uses a hepful metaphor to open The Great Museum. He describes the
normal behaviour of the devotees of a particular cult. These devotees are in fact tourists
who as he says “are trying to imagine the past.”1Photography is related to tourism
inasmuch it makes the tourist’s experience real, according to Horne: “...;by
photographing a monument, we make it real. It also offers us the joys of
possession,...”2. His theory is based on the idea that the tourist’s camera defines the
tourist’s experience, establishes the definitions of reality according to this experience
and gives the tourist the chance to own the space and time where and when the tourist is
tourist, as no other mean has been able to do before. As Susan Sontag says “To collect
photographs is to collect the world”3 and “To photograph is to appropiate the thing
photographed.”4 The tourist becomes a tourist as much as he/she is able to possess the
photographed, which becomes the landscape, historical site or cultural icon once is
photographed.
This experience the tourist seeks to possess through photography is directly affected by
nostalgia. In addition to Horne’s idea of past5, John Frow studies the relationship
between tourism and nostalgia in his Tourism and the Semiotics of Nostalgia6. Tourism
has developed at the same time than mass culture has made the experience available to
all through cameras: “from the observing traveler to the possessive tourist, and from the
world as being to the world as simulacrum.”7 To find out how this change has come
about it is necessary to consider the main developments within the photographic world
since it became available for the tourists’ use.
1 Donald Horne, The Great Museum: The Re-presentation of History (London: Pluto Press Limited, 1984), p. 1.2 Donald Horne, The Great Museum: The Re-presentation of History (London: Pluto Press Limited, 1984), p. 12.3 Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin Books, 1979), p. 3.4 Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin Books, 1979), p. 4. 5 Donald Horne, The Great Museum: The Re-presentation of History (London: Pluto Press Limited, 1984), p. 26.6 John Frow, ‘Tourism and the Semiotics of Nostalgia’, October, 57 (1991), 123-151.7 John Frow, ‘Tourism and the Semiotics of Nostalgia’, October, 57 (1991), 123-151 (p. 142).
John Taylor refers to “the illusion of ownership” that country guides offered the lower
and middle classes in England from the 1920’s to the 1940’s8 . As this particular period
of history enabled the creation of a lower to middle class in England who sought after
the stability and security that the Great War had taken away, Taylor explains that
tourism in the countryside grew dramatically, at the same time that Kodak cameras were
made available to the majority of the population. As the industrial era came about, mass
consumption increased. The period in-between wars saw the phenomenon of tourism
reach through class divisions, and camera in hand, English people learned a new idea of
picturesque countryside which gave the nation a notion of identity. It was the un-spoilt
non-urban spaces that captivated the imagination of the masses appealing through once
again nostalgia to recover the shaken English values after the First World War: “ The
guides focused upon history, topography, and antiquarian interest, demonstrated the
virtue of self-improvement, and advocated the beauty, heritage, or legacy of England.”9
As the urban centres were growing unstopably, the appeal of the rural, the yet
undiscovered and unvisited, the roots of England, increased side by side. In a world
where changes were too quick to understand, the people sought refuge in the past, and
took along their Kodak cameras so that they could own that piece of the past and take it
home.
Brochures and travel books depicting this ideal of countryside found their place in the
market of commodities, as one of the best examples is In Search of England by H.V.
Morton:
8 John Taylor, ‘Kodak and the ‘English’ Market between the Wars’, Journal of Design History, 7, No. 1 (1994), 29-42 (p. 31).9 John Taylor, ‘Kodak and the ‘English’ Market between the Wars’, Journal of Design History, 7, No. 1 (1994), 29-42 (p. 31).
The idea of English countryside, unspoilt green spaces and serenity is expressed through
the use of the typical village elements.
In the following early Kodak advert 10 the idea of owning photographs as a way of
owning an experience and making it real it is clear. The illustration depicts a moment of
leisure, leisure time that had been commodified inasmuch society had become
industrial. Kodak persuades the masses that the fun it is not to be had for the sake of it,
but it is to be photographed, as the fun part of it is to show the photographs, to make the
moment theirs, therefore making it timeless. In a society where materialism becomes the
main ideology, owning a moment in time becomes essential:
spatial factor. Then it makes its way onto the brochures and postcards to advertise its
non existent self. The postcard is a vital show of the experience as a tourist visiting
Stonehenge. Stongehenge as a circle of stones has long ago lost its original meaning, to
become the time we have spent there.
Steven Hoelscher approaches the history of the relationship between tourism and
photography from the American point of view. In his article about photographer H.H.
Bennett he says: “Acquiring photographs gives shape to travel as it informs what the
viewer should see, how it should be seen, and when it should be seen- all in a matter-of-
fact and seemingly “unmediated” way.”13 He is referring to the role of photography as
an essential aid to the widespread of tourism as a mass-culture activity. Using the same
example already used, when visiting Stonehenge the viewer is told what it is to be seen,
to be photographed, to be purchased and to revisit once back home.
By exposure and acquired cultural education it is understood that the tourist needs to
photograph the visited space as otherwise its existence in the tourist reality is
jeopardized. The two images above show the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. The left image is
a postcard from the beginning of the XX century14. The right image belongs to a
personal experience as a visitor in Istanbul. Not only the photograph needs to be taken
13 Steven Hoelscher, ‘The Photographic Construction of Tourist Space in Victorian America’, Geographical Review, 88, No. 4, J.B. Jackson and Geography (1998), pp. 548-570 (p. 549).14 http://www.old-istanbul.com/Page5/sahmet2.jpg
The tourist identity has been determined by the camera and the experience it provides
them with:
Both these examples of photography18 depict the iconic idea of the meaning of tourist.
Tourists do not have eyes anymore. They have cameras and through them they are able
to see the world. Without them the world is not their reality. On group holidays taking
the photograph has become more important than admiring the sight. Tourists are told
they will have time to take the necessary photograph so that their visit is worthwhile.
Otherwise it becomes valueless.
18 http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/3225881.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=27D044C0A019FA6C310FCDDE3EA62152A55A1E4F32AD3138 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/erin_nicole/2142473499/
Photography enables the tourist to exist. Both as a subject of the photograph or as the
viewer the tourist can’t escape its power. The tourist is bound to feel a certain degree of
frustration precisely because of this. Frow cites Levi-Strauss when dealing with the
Irresoluble Paradox: “the less one culture communicates with another, the less likely
they are to be corrupted, one by the other; but, on the other hand, the less likely it is, in
such conditions, that the respective emissaries of these cultures will be able to seize the
richness and significance of their diversity. The alternative is inescapable: either I am a
traveler in ancient times, and faced with a prodigious spectacle which would be almost
entirely unintelligible to me and might,indeed, provoke me to mockery or disgust; or I
am a traveler of our own day, hastening in search of a vanished reality.”19Tourist go in
search of the symbols exposed by photography, symbols they are familiar with and are
able to comprehend, hence the need to make the icon ours. Comfronted with symbols
and signs not able to understand, tourists lose their quality of tourist, become not
interested at its best, possibly apathetic and intolerant once challenged by a reality that it
is not theirs, and it will never be theirs as they cannot relate to it nor own it. There is a
certain degree of anxiety when visiting a well known cultural enclave and tourists are
not able to confirm and fulfill their expectations by visiting the symbol of such place. It
is only when the tourists look back at the photographs of themselves on the Empire
State Building that they can safely say and assume they were indeed in New York City.
They could have been anywhere else in the world, up until that moment when they are
able to make the city theirs, as the city is the Empire State Building:
19 John Frow, ‘Tourism and the Semiotics of Nostalgia’, October, 57 (1991), 123-151 (p. 132).
It is only once the Empire State Building is seen20 the tourist can rest assured they are in
New York.
Using the common language of photography, nostalgia gives the tourist experience an
insolvable paradox: “This is the paradox of the impossible appropiation of the Other
repeated with an economic vengeance; and it is a paradox that rebounds, since any place
at all can become the cultural Other of tourism”.21The search of a utopian reality throws
the tourists into the world, makes them shoot the cultural reference they are familiar
with, lets them think it becomes theirs and enables them to go back happily thinking
they own a portion of the world and its past. It is only when the moment of realization
of this paradox becomes real that the tourist experience becomes frustrated. Still, the
mass-culture and capitalist mechanisms to protect their experience are many and
powerful, photography being the most important of all.
20 http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/40/013_MR749~Empire-State-Building-Posters.jpg21 John Frow, ‘Tourism and the Semiotics of Nostalgia’, October, 57 (1991), 123-151 (p. 151)..