  The
tourists invaded the Indians’ privacy, photographing holy objects and the sacred dances and places, if necessary paying the Indians to pose and getting
them to revise their ceremonies to provide more photogenic
material.’
In the case of modern sun-and-sand tourism, unspoiled nature is the key trope. Hennig describes the typical process, “... all the
characteristics of daily life and all natural rubbish are slowly removed. It is an empty space, which now serves as the stage for holiday activity.
Traces of human work such as boats and nets disappeared from the stretches of beach used by tourists and became instead picturesque objects to be gazed
at from the promenade along the beach. Fishermen and bathers who originally encountered each other at the edge of the sea soon went their own ways
in separate areas. Thus the bathers were alone with themselves undisturbed by the social
world of the natives.”
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 |
 This
form of de-contextualisation, this divorce from mundane location, political, social and economic interfaces, allows selected bits of other cultures to
be accumulated, unquestioned and unquestioningly, strung together in films, videos, albums - a combination of imaginary landscapes, architectures of
longing and a trophy room. “The close connection between film and tourism is not a coincidence, they have a structure of perception and imagination
in common. Both of them create experiential worlds in which there is reciprocal interpenetration of reality and dream. A fictional, emotionally charged
space is created from discrete, ‘real’ elements. The basic principles here are montage and movement. Touristic impressions are assembled
at the editing table. Much is excluded from perceptions as being ‘useless,’ the successful scenes are incorporated into the imagined holiday. Touristic
perception aesthetizises and typifies just as film does.”
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While western capitalism routinely uses images to paper over social ruptures due to racism, gender and
economic inequality, it is just as busily engaged in fragmenting the gaze, of producing ‘frameable’ views and consumable cultures, images to be
consumed by tourist eyes either directly or by proxy by means of their mechanical deputy, the camera. |
