Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.
In her 1977 book, On Photography, Susan Sontag wrote:
“A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it – by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs. The very activity of taking pictures is soothing, and assuages general feelings of disorientation that are likely to be exacerbated by travel. Most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable that they encounter.”
I think this is even more true today, as people seem to visit places only to get a selfie that shows they were there. It’s important to do more to experience the places to which we travel.
Taking photos is not only my profession, it’s something I feel a real need to do when I’m on the road. I also collect images as souvenirs, but I try to put the camera down from time to time to just be in a place.
I don’t plan to leave the camera home any time soon, but I will continue to try and limit the amount of time that I experience the world through its viewfinder. After all, if you don’t actually experience the place, how can you truly capture it with your photos? You’ll most likely just mimic all of the other photos you’ve already seen of the place and bring nothing new to the table.
My goal is for my camera to be less of a wall between me and an experience, and more of a door that leads me to experiences that I might never otherwise have.
