David L's online art college

The Documentary Photographer Is Always A ‘Super Tourist’ In The World Of Others

I would like to explore the concept: The documentary photographer is always a ‘super tourist’ in the world of others. This statement is premised on the understanding that within the medium of documentary photography, a photographer and the image he is capturing is composed of dual and opposite positions, an inside and outside.
The word ‘tourist’ defines an outsider visiting a foreign place away from home, usually traveling for pleasure. Therefore in this statement, a ‘tourist’ identifies the photographer’s role as an outsider whilst the ‘image captured’ exists as the local or embodied insider. This concept is applicable, although the phraseology in the statement, ‘always a super tourist’ marginalizes the stance that a photographer’s identity may also exist from within the inside position and not ‘always’ situated on the outside.
The art theorist and historian, Abigail Solomon-Godeau characterizes the insider photographer position as being: “engaging, participating, and having privileged knowledge and is the ‘good’ position” and the outsider position as: “producing an alienated and voyeuristic relationship that heightens the distance between subject and object.”1
Susan Sontag is the late author, literary theorist, and political activist who termed the photographer as a ‘super tourist’ in her book, On Photography. She reiterates the theme that a photographer’s attempt to mirror reality is merely an interpretation of the world as in a painting or drawing. She adds to this the notion that: “The whole point of photographing people is that you are not intervening in their lives, only visiting them.” She acutely believes that a photographer is an outsider-‘tourist’, similar to an “anthropologist [–] colonizing new experiences from familiar subjects.”2
‘Tourism’ can be seen as the extension of the post-colonial concern for compromising ‘the other’ through colonial discourse and domination. In effect, the tourist who is presumably in search of the ‘new’ even in the Newcastle Airport Parking structure is actually seeking the already ‘known packaged holiday product’. The desire for the exotic is most often found in underdeveloped countries made dependant on the tourist trade of external industries and multinational companies.
This relationship between the binary colonizer and colonized is of similar nature to Sontag claims that, “To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge-and, therefore, like power.”3
She seems to be insinuating that this imperialistic nature to a photographer and the subject matter photographed, renders the image as an objectification, an over-simplification of what is complex and as a result disavows it’s social reality. In effect, Susan Sontag’s concerns lie with what is ‘ethical, truthful and real’ in documentary photography, and this fundamental question bears much consideration.
While the result of photography work may simultaneously engage the viewer towards deeper inspection through various classifications of voyeurism or by presenting an exotic ‘otherness’, it does not necessarily indicate a given representation depicting the outside ‘world of others’ within the photographer’s reality.
If a ‘super tourist’-outsider were an exaggerated definition of a photographer who visits places away from home, would he remain an outsider to his work if it were: documenting his everyday life as a personal narrative within his own culture? The art of observing the everyday within any medium was recognized and encouraged by the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre who proclaimed, “–that most insignificant of categories, the everyday, to be worthy of theoretical attention” and “Wasn’t it in the nature of theoretical thought to investigate the trivial?”4
I suggest that ‘always a super tourist’ applied to an artist may exclude a set of insider positions that as a whole allows documentary photography of the everyday to be a legitimate multidimensional art form. Gregory Muir illustrates in his article Documentary Style, the outcome of artists defying the total outside status of a ‘tourist’ by observing and recording their everyday lives through their work.

– artists who seek to engage with reality through their own highly personalized line of inquiry [–] set against the stolid documentary format can lead to a blurring of the boundaries between fiction and non fiction, real and unreal, ordinary and extraordinary. In short, the documentary style slides somewhere between straight documentary film making (sic) and contemporary art.5

1. Godeau, S. A. (1994), Inside Out in Public Information, desire, Disaster, Document, Exhibition Catalogue, p.49
2. Sontag, S., (1977). On Photography. 10, 2002. Penguin Classics, pp. 41-42
3. Sontag, S., (1977), p.4
4. Ross, K., (1997). ‘French Quotidian’ in L. Gumpert (ed) The Art of the Everyday, The Quotidian in Postwar French Culture, New York University Press. (short extract)
5. Muir, G., (Jan/Feb 2003). Documentary Style, Flash Art.

Get Ready Graduating Art Students: This Last Year Will Be A Fast Ride

Important things to do before you graduate as a BA (Hons) Fine Arts Degree student will surely be overwhelming, but if you plan ahead you will be able to jump start on opportunities that maybe presented during the end of term Degree Art Show.
Most importantly beside the completion of your final artwork, building a website representing your very best works requires planning. The website will be your business card and makes it easily to refer interested curators or important art contacts to view your work as an online gallery.
Gather the necessary digital photograph documentation and if you don’t own a quality camera, query your college for one. Often there is a photography department with equipment or a media loan department, if these are not available start asking friends with cameras for a loan. The website should contain at least:

• pictures and documentation your work
• a short contextual paragraph describing your work (Consider referring to your art dissertation for writing clues and have a tutor proof read it with an opinion. This will also assist you in articulating verbally to others, who you are as an artist.)
• your contact information

Again refer to you college to build the website. Ask the college media lab for access and support with Adobe Dreamweaver, a website building software. Another of many alternatives is WordPress, which is an open source blog publishing application allowing you to upload pictures and text. Start the inquiry early, as you will need to purchase a web domain name and decide on a web-host.
Before the final Art Degree Show, begin to research Galleries alongside Art Directors and Curators. Determine which galleries best suits your work, go to many art openings and collect names and contact information to add to your Degree Show invitation list.
Join a-n magazine (artist newsletter). As a Fine Art graduating student in the UK you qualify for a year’s free membership. Here you’ll find listings of art opportunities for exhibiting, jobs, residencies and much more. Near the end of the school year there will be many art exhibit calls and competitions advertised for recent art graduates, there is often a fee to apply but some are free.
If you aren’t too exhausted already and ready to park it in the Newcastle Airport Parking structure, it is beneficial to stage small art exhibits with art friends or other art students before the Final Degree Show. Building on an exhibition history will make an impact on potential art contacts by showing your have art experience.