We take pictures, therefore we are
My review of Mike Robinson and David Picard’s The Framed World: Tourism, Tourists and Photography has been published in THES (No. 1,923, 19-25 November 2009, p. 50). If you want to find out what I think of it, click here.
2 thoughts on “We take pictures, therefore we are”
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Hello Laura,
I have never thought before about the meanings of taking pictures on holiday period.
I remember my parents having a look to their photo album from time to time. There, in this black and white pictures, is the record of my family. But however it seems that everyone wants leave track of its existence in this world.
Of course there were other times, and a life may being collected in several pages or several albums. Nowadays everybody takes hundreds of pictures on several weeks of holiday.
Why dozens of photos? After a weekend in the office when someone asks us about our travel, there are not words but yes a cd with a lot of downloaded photos. Maybe our society have lost the oral communication and found pictures as a replacement of it.
Our grandparents told us their anecdotes. Our grandchildren will have several of files in the computer to know about us.
Sorry for the spaninglish.
You are right, Carlos. What do you think these pictures say about us and the way we relate to places? Do you think they are another way of telling stories? They say a picture is a 1000 words…
The problem I see today is that people take too many pictures and look at too few. We put pictures on Facebook, we keep them on our hard drives, yet, we never really look at what goes on within those magical squares.
There also seems to be this strange habit of taking pictures instead of living events. Like rock concerts, for example. When I photograph concerts, I cannot look and listen at the same time. Either I engage with the music or with the act of photographing.
Saludos! Lx