The proof I WENT ON A VACATION?

My fiancée’s niece walked to point out the secret door Marie Antoinette had used to escape from the Women’s March on Versailles in October 1789.   The woman next to me jutted out her arm with a ‘STOP’ so her friend could take a photo of her in front of the Queen’s bed. 10 year old Brianna jumped back and apologized. When she finally pointed out the side door to me, the two picture-taking friends were busy shooting portraits from a different angle on my left. 

These women’s need to take a photo of themselves in the luxurious background of an 18^th century French queen’s bedchamber was matched by scores of tourists snapping shot after shot of themselves in front of a gilded molding or a molded guild. They were not alone. (And you can take pics of them and post them here.) 

WHY ARE TOURISTS TAKING SO MANY PICTURES OF THEMSELVES?!?!

I reminisced about the days of film canisters and focus eyeholes. Yes, the zero additional cost of snapping an extra photo in the digital camera age is part of it. After purchasing your phone or camera, the only cost is your time. Time to unload and sort through your overly-snappy (clicky?) hand doesn’t seem so burdensome as you barrel from room to room from one ‘branded’ tourist site to the next. 

Modern vacation goers

Nearly everyone with a phone has a digital camera attached to it. And the number of international tourists is up. Will I ever get to look at the Mona Lisa without being pushed out of the way? [And not just the Mona Lisa but every single painting in the room as cameras scurry to blink in front of every worthy work!]

In the next room, a young woman entered the door with her camera already outstretched, snapping away like a trigger-happy video game soldier. She didn’t look at the furnishings, the garden view from the window, the Temptation of Darius painting on the wall, or read the description.

In a certain way, I get it. Most of the camera holders had traveled far to a city that was expensive, from the hotel to the bourgeois restaurants. But the shots gave them a chance to show family, friends, and facebook friends. They wanted to show that they were a little bit more fancy and more cultured than when they spent all that money. And if a picture of manicured trees and a gold-embossed painting frame looks nice by itself, the message registers with an image of your relaxed self next to the 17^th century seascape. And taking pics is free!

 

This set of New Yorker photos of people being tourists starts to get at that idea.  When people tell others they vacationed in Paris, they expect a certain cachet, and a shot in the gold and mirrors reflects a moment when you rose to a respectability you might not feel at your daily rounds. Or maybe it is just proof that you are not stuck at work that week.

That’s not all it is, however. We are developing a need to share everything before experiencing it, I think at the risk of not absorbing it deeply first.  As I went to a Los Van Van concert and people snapped away their future visual memories of the Cuban salsa-son band, and the man in front of me videoed the entire last song, I wished for a audience of people so enveloped in the present they would not think of the camera phone in their pocket. And so I could see the musicians on stage!