The whole thing that I was working on was the idea that a native person could mysteriously turn into a tourist as soon as they go on holiday or leave their home place or town. I was going to places that were official tourist attractions and taking pictures of people being tourists. Local doesnt exist outside of my head. Nothing exists outside of my perception. and everything within my perception is local to it. Being a tourist is local to my perception.
The places that I would like to go sight seeing or the things that I like to look at are often run down or abandon. Broken old buildings with overgrown vegetation fill me optimisms. but at the same time I expect the sight before I see it and I have my reasons for wanting to see it. in a way I have the experience of the sight seeing trip before it takes place and the only reason that I actually go is to confirm the fantasy and in a sense validate its existence. Going to those dilapidated landscapes that I lie to look at seems just as contrived as going to one of the official tourist attraction like Yellowstone national park or Disneyland. When I go to one of the official tourist attractions my main interest there is in the people who find interest in them. Those places have a certain attraction. Its interesting to me to see the way that people interact and negotiate that attraction. The abandon hospital and the California theme park are the same. The photographer/tourist and the search for confirmation to the expectations of meaning.
sometimes I take a picture of a tourist and I get caught in the act. they look at me with cold stern eyes. they are concerned that I may be a threat to them. a creep or a stalker. but they always let me go untaxed. they have to because Im one of them. Me photographing me.
The pictures are dialogic. They may stimulate conversations of likes and dislikes that people have in common. we have been to the baron landscape. it’s the Bonneville salt flats. Ive seen it in books and movies. so I went there and stood on the salt and thought about race cars and Chuck Yeager. and I saw someone like you there too and then I took a picture of you taking pictures of the salt and also probably thinking of race cars. we were on the same uncommon ground, that flat salt landscape. Together trying to be outside of our selves. Where does out side and inside happen when thinking about myself. I feel like every thing is inside of me. the tourist is my invention. a figment of my own constructed reality. they are my alter ego. ants of my mind scouring the landscape of my imagination. logic scouts searching for reason in the abstract dream land. I can shoot them as I shoot myself. were all the same in that way.
if I show my picture to other people as a spectacle does that make me exploitive? what does exploitive mean when dealing with cultural constructions.
a picture of an empty parking lot might seem like a picture of total nothingness to some people. other people may see a memory unfold or maybe recognize a sign or artifact within that landscape that reveals clues to a past life.
I was making a joke about what the tourists were looking at. equating the documentary photographer to a tourist on a boat sailing past exotic lands and stealing snapshots to take home. pretending that they were involved in some way to the places that they only visited for a week. thinking that they went somewhere besides their own head. thinking they went somewhere and therefore could now travel back to the place from which they originally came from.
what Im trying to talk about is how we as people decide what is home and what is not home and also through that process of distinction how do we define our identity.
why do people go sightseeing?
we want to go somewhere away from our selves so that after some amount of time we can come back to our selves.
I saw a billboard in Nevada that advertised a hotel to local people with the slogan,
You don’t have to travel far to get away for the weekend.
exactly how far do you have to travel to get away?
when we see something its through a filter of all our past experiences, beliefs and opinions. there are built in expectations when we look at anything.
sometimes I wonder if there is anything besides those expectations.
What is considered a scenic landscape is totally arbitrary and dependant on what the viewer brings to the viewing of that scene. A landscape ceases to exist without a viewer.
Sight seeing and being on vacation is really about identifying with your home or your self. You have to critically analyze this environment that youre in if you are going to be able to recognize that its not your home. Identify different elements of the culture and landscape make comparisons to culture and landscape of home and find similar or dissimilar attributes there in. Little details of same and not the same compare to home. They confirm that you have the right idea about home. You know where you come from. You know what youre made of because you are able to sort through the differences between your kind of people of place and their kind of people and place.
