as bad as the Elgin Marbles, except over in an instant
(I'm going to deviate from my usual behavior of copying my travel post from the other blog I contribute to in order to post something especially for you guys. If you still want to read about my travels, I'm sorry but you're going to have to go through the extra step of clicking on "My other blog." Unless I have a swarm of new ideas, though, this will not be a regular occurrence. -ed)As some of you may know, I dislike having my picture taken. In order to stave off any ad hominem attacks, let me state clearly: the following has nothing to do with this irrational dislike. It has to do with the behavior many people exhibit when traveling, a behavior I find irritating to the point of being slightly repellent. So, if there must be ad hominem attacks, at least let them be directed accurately. Given that, let me continue.
I am an unusual traveler, because I don't like taking pictures of the places I visit. Most people I see visiting famous monuments, of which there are many in the neck of the world in which I live, stop, set themselves up against a background, and take a picture, thus proving that they had in fact been to the place. Now, there is no one particular reason why people take pictures of themselves against the background of these famous things, so the fact that I don't want to is even more surprising. The burden of proof lies firmly on me.
Why do people take photographs in famous locations? I presume one might want to take pictures in order to show other people what one did on one's travels. I won't be able to show my grandkids what I did in London or Paris, and that might be a shame. But in my experience, seeing a photo of what someone else did in a location I haven't been to is not really a way of experiencing the place vicariously. The picture, being posed, being of something which they are completely unfamiliar, will not replicate the experience the same way the inspiration of imagination started by a good story about the place will. Telling a story connects you to the actions, the feelings, and the context of the experience; the picture will connect you to the light and the shape of the object. This is especially true with the kind of pictures I see being taken most often at these places, the kinds of pictures I mentioned above and are what I'm really railing against: posed photos, with a smiling face in the foreground and something famous in the background.
Perhaps, though, I am not taking the picture to show other people. Perhaps it is a way of reminding myself why I went there and the experience I had while I was there. This might be more acceptable, except for the actual results that such an attitude produces. I will go to a famous place for the experience; I wish to remember the experience, so I will take photographs. Therefore (most people seem to think) I will go there to take photographs. Perhaps I am being unfair, but it's useful to see the behavior of people at these attractions. They show up, they spend five minutes taking the photograph, and then they leave. That this is a symptom of a larger problem I have no doubt, but the fact remains that they are missing the crucial premise: the experience of going to a place. To get a true experience, one must appreciate what he or she is seeing, feeling, smelling, hearing, and appreciation takes some time. Henri Nouwen, to write a book about the Rembrandt painting The Return of the Prodigal Son, spent seven hours just sitting and looking at it. That was only the first day. I imagine that he appreciated that work inexpressibly more than someone who walked past, took a photo of it, and moved on, as I saw so many people doing to similar works at the Louvre.
Furthermore, the volume of pictures taken lends some evidence that people are not taking pictures to enhance their memory. Take a look at all the photos in albums on facebook, some numbering in the thousands. Who has time to go over those and consider what happened? And if people do, it would seem to me like it would take more time to go through the photos than it took to take them in the first place, which is again a case of mixing up cause and effect of the reasons for traveling. Sometimes I think that people on facebook use the number of photos only as a scorecard, so they can say, I have more than you. Going through an album, I often only see two kinds of photo. One is spontaneously taken, of something that seemed pretty or interesting or weird at the time of taking it. Now, unless the person taking the picture is considering these spontaneous pictures carefully, using photography as art, then the overwhelming majority of these pictures will lose their appreciated value as time goes by. For those who do consider their photography to be an attempt at art, they would agree that the percentage of useless photos is only slightly less for them. This again implies that these pictures are not for posterity or memory, but only to fill the album. The other kind of picture is the posed kind as mentioned. Posing for a photo idealizes the moment, makes it artificial and reduces the memory to a set of the same smiling face with different backgrounds. It takes away any context from the moment captured in the photo and reduces it to the level of a postcard when compared to the original artwork.
The final evidence I have is the places that tourists go to take pictures. There is no concern, in many cases, for why one should go to a place, just that it is a place to go to get one's picture taken. This is not especially evident for people going to places like Trafalgar square, Notre Dame, etc., and I hope people who realize their historical, philosophical, and aesthetic significance appreciate them in some way despite the lack of effort that seems to follow from merely taking a picture and then leaving. Perhaps this next part is merely something I don't understand or am ill-qualified to judge (since I used to live here), but it seems to me to fit. Many tourists to England, especially Americans, like to visit places that have been mentioned in some of the more popular novels. The barrier between platforms nine and ten at King's Cross rail-station, for instance, has become a popular tourist attraction. I wondered whether or not visiting the place mentioned in the book made the book seem more real: this seemed to be the only reason for seeing it. Now, since the book that this locale was featured in was a fantasy novel, technically all the places in the novel are imaginary, even the ones based on real locales.
It seems to me to be antithetical to the imaginary nature of the book to have (as they have done) half of a trolley sticking out of the wall. I would prefer to have nothing of note there, so that I could always have a little wonder for the invisible workings of the world, so that I might have a little hope in the back of my mind for the possibility of doors hidden behind illusory walls.
As I mentioned, I believe all of these actions are symptoms of larger problems. It would be worth it to me, though, if, even in rejecting my argument, someone thought about what they were doing and why they were doing it. It has been said that two centuries ago, people knew when a thing was proven and when it was not; that is the situation that I think I would wish to return to above all things.
posted by Emmett @ 08:11
2 Comments:
I thought I put a comment. Did I not actually hit the publish button? Huh. Well, I wrote it in a lucid and patient mood, which does not accurately describe me now. Or then, probably.
Er, well, what did you mean to say?
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