In the Broken Power Lines blog we find two interesting paragraphs on travel and photography in relation to tourism. It is difficult not being a tourist when travelling in another state or country.

The first paragraph says:

The Facebook or Flickr Photo Album says this: Look at all of the beautiful places I’ve been to and seen (I am so cool)! Our pictures serve as badges, testifying to our courageous traveling spirit, when truth be told, they are more like a collection of dead, petrified butterflies pinned under glass. To put it simply: what kind of deeper understanding about existence is gained or opened up to by simply seeing beautiful landscapes? Again, please don’t think I am hypocritical. I relish the aesthetic pleasure of seeing mountain scapes, among other forms of natural and manmade beauty. However, what I am challenging, is the idea that this form spectatorship naturally makes us cosmopolitan, open-minded, and adventurous people.

... often what we are seeing and photographing is spectacle produced specifically for the gaze of the tourist/foreigner. I will never forget arriving in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia and being welcomed by a troupe of Inner Mongolians dressed in traditional costume, singing traditional songs. Later on in the evening I shared a cigarette with them and listened to them tell me about how boring it is to sing the same fucking song again and again; discuss where they were going to drink that night; who is dating who, etc.. Much more insightful to me than the spectacle of cultural authenticity was this group of ordinary, bored, young people, who reminded me of characters from Jia Zhangke’s “Unknown Pleasures.”