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Journal Article•DOI•

Tourist Photography and the Reverse Gaze

Alex Gillespie
01 Sep 2006-Ethos (Blackwell Publishing Ltd)-Vol. 34, Iss: 3, pp 343-366
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that tourists, when they feel the reverse gaze, are not taking the actual perspective of Ladakhis, but are instead attributing their own critical attitudes toward other tourist photographers to the Ladakhi photographee.
Abstract: The interaction between tourist photographer and local photographee is a dynamic site of identity construction. To date, this interaction has been theorized mainly in terms of the power of the tourist photographer, which has been shown to mediate and commodify local cultures and create new identities amongst those photographed. The present article contributes a change of emphasis by examining the sociopsychological dynamics of the reverse gaze and its role in constructing the emerging identity of the photographer. The reverse gaze refers to the gaze of the photographee on the photographer as perceived by the photographer. Data from Ladakh, a popular backpacker tourist destination in northern India, illustrates how the reverse gaze of Ladakhis can constitute the emerging tourist self, stimulating uncomfortable social emotions, such as embarrassment. The question raised by the article is, what sociopsychological processes constitute the power of the reverse gaze to position the tourist photographer? In this article, I argue that tourists, when they feel the reverse gaze, are not taking the actual perspective of Ladakhis, but are instead attributing their own critical attitudes toward other tourist photographers to the Ladakhi photographee. Thus, the discomfort that a tourist in Ladakh feels when caught in the reverse gaze, I argue, is a product of that tourist being positioned in the same disparaging way as that tourist usually positions other tourist photographers.

Summary (2 min read)

Jump to: [Introduction] – [CHARACTERIZING THE REVERSE GAZE] – [TAKING THE PERSPECTIVE OF LADAKHIS?] – [TOURISTS, TRAVELERS AND POST-TOURISTS] – [THEORIZING THE REVERSE GAZE] and [CONCLUSION]

Introduction

  • The interaction between tourist photographer and local photographee is a dynamic site of identity construction.
  • To date, this interaction has been theorized mainly in terms of the power of the tourist photographer, which has been shown to mediate and commodify local cultures and create new identities amongst those photographed.
  • Data from Ladakh, a popular backpacker tourist destination in northern India, illustrates how the reverse gaze of Ladakhis can constitute the emerging tourist self, stimulating uncomfortable social emotions, such as embarrassment.
  • The photographee can gaze upon the tourist photographer, and this “reverse gaze” can play an important role in constituting the emerging self of the tourist photographer.

CHARACTERIZING THE REVERSE GAZE

  • The reverse gaze is clearly evident in an unusual interaction that I observed during fieldwork in Ladakh, northern India.
  • In many ways she crystallizes tourists’ imagination of Ladakh.
  • The tourist in the left of Figure 2 had previously been photographing the photogenic Ladakhi woman also, and he, unable to hide his camera, simply began to photograph, or at least pretend to photograph, someone or something else.
  • And the manifestly social nature of his discomfort, the blushing, indicates that the mechanism underlying this re-positioning is to be found in the social situation.
  • One of the most extreme strategies for avoiding the reverse gaze is to either travel without a camera or to hide one’s camera.

TAKING THE PERSPECTIVE OF LADAKHIS?

  • One way to explain tourist photographers’ manifest discomfort when caught in the reverse gaze of Ladakhis comes from the tradition of Symbolic Interactionism (Blumer 1969).
  • Assuming that this is how Ladakhis feel when photographed without permission, and empathizing with this feeling, could clearly explain why tourist photographers, when caught in the reverse gaze, feel uncomfortable.
  • Tourism has created jobs and economic wealth, both of which are widely appreciated by Ladakhis.
  • They often follow tourists chanting “one photo, one photo” – meaning that they want the tourist to take a photograph of them.
  • Examining the Ladakhi construction of “Ladakhi culture” reveals that it is comprised largely of the things that tourists photograph.

TOURISTS, TRAVELERS AND POST-TOURISTS

  • Generally speaking, tourists are quite self-reflective about tourism (MacCannell 2001; Prebensen et al. 2003).
  • That is so pointless Travis: I just felt bad for him Travis narrates the tourist photographer as getting an elderly Ladakhi man to “pose” so that she could take a photograph.
  • Second, Marten criticises tourists who “run through the country and take some pictures.”.
  • Notice the similarity between the reverse gaze and tourists’ own perception of tourist photographers.
  • This discomfort is arguably compounded by the fact that it simultaneously reveals a contradiction between tourists’ idealized self-position (traveler or post-tourist) and their actual behavior (just another tourist with a camera).

THEORIZING THE REVERSE GAZE

  • Tourists’ attempts to positively differentiate themselves from other tourists are liable to lead to contradictions.
  • The reverse gaze may make the tourist photographer aware of his or her own contradictions.
  • Admiring “traditional” cultures is filled with ambiguity.
  • I am not suggesting that tourists are “secretly” racist, but simply that tourists’ imagination of Ladakh is embedded in a complex stream of newer romantic representations (Bishop 1989) and older more Orientalist representations (Said 1978; Bray 1997).

CONCLUSION

  • Tourism is one crystallization of this hegemony (Crawshaw and Urry 1997).
  • Incorporating the second gaze into the concept of the tourist gaze reconstructs the tourist as a dialogical and questioning subject.
  • The reverse gaze can facilitate the second gaze by redirecting the gaze of the tourist away from the toured and back to the tourist, making contradictions salient and questioning motivations.
  • Finally, the present analysis is not only about the contradictory positionings that arise within the social field, between different social actors, it is also about multiple positionings within a single actor.
  • Moreover, there is a contradiction in how tourists position themselves compared to other tourists:.

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TOURIST PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE REVERSE GAZE
(To be published in Ethos, 2006)
Alex Gillespie (alex.gillespie@stir.ac.uk)
Department of Psychology
University of Stirling
Stirling, FK9 4LA
Scotland
UK
Tel: + 44 (0) 1786 466841
Fax: + 44 (0) 1786 467641
By-line: Alex Gillespie is a Lecturer in Social Psychology in the Department of
Psychology, University of Stirling, Scotland.
Running head: The reverse gaze
The reverse gaze
2
ABSTRACT
The interaction between tourist photographer and local photographee is a dynamic site of
identity construction. To date, this interaction has been theorized mainly in terms of the
power of the tourist photographer, which has been shown to mediate and commodify local
cultures and create new identities amongst those photographed. The present article
contributes a change of emphasis by examining the socio-psychological dynamics of the
reverse gaze and its role in constructing the emerging identity of the photographer. The
reverse gaze refers to the gaze of the photographee upon the photographer as perceived by
the photographer. Data from Ladakh, a popular backpacker tourist destination in northern
India, illustrates how the reverse gaze of Ladakhis can constitute the emerging tourist self,
stimulating uncomfortable social emotions, such as embarrassment. The question raised
by the article is, what socio-psychological processes constitute the power of the reverse
gaze to position the tourist photographer? The article argues that tourists, when they feel
the reverse gaze, are not taking the actual perspective of Ladakhis, but are instead
attributing their own critical attitudes toward other tourist photographers to the Ladakhi
photographee. Thus the discomfort that a tourist in Ladakh feels when caught in the
reverse gaze, it is argued, is a product of that tourist being positioned in the same
disparaging way as that tourist usually positions other tourist photographers.
Key Terms: Tourism, Reverse Gaze, India, George Herbert Mead, Positioning,
The reverse gaze
3
The interaction between tourist photographer and local photographee is a clearly
identifiable genre of interaction that is reproduced, in various ways, across the world.
Concepts in tourism research, such as Urry’s (1990) ‘tourist gaze,’ have tended to endow
the tourist behind the camera with much power (e.g., Crawshaw and Urry 1997). The
tourist gaze, objectified in the camera, is said to have the power to create a cultural revival
(Bruner 2005:119), commodify local culture (Philip and Mercer 1999) and cultivate new
forms of self-consciousness amongst the local citizens (Tilley 1999). However, the
photographer-photographee relation is a complex interaction with at least two sides
(Cohen et al. 1992). It is not only the photographee who is influenced by the interaction,
so too is the photographer. The photographer-photographee interaction is a boundary
(Barth 1969). At this boundary, the dynamic and situated emergence not only of the
photographee self, but also of the tourist photographer self, is evident. The photographee
can gaze upon the tourist photographer, and this “reverse gaze” can play an important role
in constituting the emerging self of the tourist photographer.
CHARACTERIZING THE REVERSE GAZE
The reverse gaze is clearly evident in an unusual interaction that I observed during
fieldwork in Ladakh, northern India. The interaction occurred at a cultural festival that had
been arranged by Women’s Alliance, a local NGO, in order to display Ladakhi culture to
Western tourists. The audience comprised a couple of hundred foreign tourists and
The reverse gaze
4
Ladakhis sitting and standing in a wide circle. At the centre of the circle was an open
space where troupes of traditionally dressed Ladakhi women took turns to sing and dance.
In this type of situation it is expected that tourists will take photographs, and most tourists
were availing of the opportunity. However, not all the tourist cameras were trained upon
the dancing women. Several tourists were openly photographing traditional-looking
Ladakhis in the audience.
Figure 1: My photograph of a tourist photographing a traditionally dressed Ladakhi
woman
The reverse gaze
5
Figure 1 shows a picture I took of a Ladakhi woman being photographed by a French
tourist with a telephoto lens. This particular Ladakhi comes from the remote village of
Drass. She is wearing a homespun woolen dress, with traditional jewelry and traditional
shoes. Adorning her head is an impressive arrangement of flowers. In many ways she
crystallizes tourists’ imagination of Ladakh. Tourists visit Ladakh expecting it to be
broadly equivalent to Tibet (Dodin and Räther 2001). As with Tibet, Ladakh is imagined
to be spiritual and timeless, and Ladakhis are imagined to practice colorful traditions
(Bishop 1989; Lopez 1998). The dress and manner of this Ladakhi woman, more than
many other Ladakhis at the festival, conformed to these expectations. Accordingly, she
was the focus of many tourist cameras. Indeed, during the course of fourteen minutes I
counted twenty-one different tourists photographing her. Some of the tourists requested if
they could take her photograph, and some even posed with her, but the majority did not
ask for permission. Overall she was obliging, though noticeably she did joke with one
tourist by pretending to dodge the tourist’s photographic gaze. The Frenchman in Figure 1
was the most active photographer that I observed. He followed the Ladakhi woman around
the festival taking photographs, and when she sat down, he took up his position in Figure
1. By this time, the Frenchman’s relentless photographing had been noticed by other
tourists.
Shortly after I took the photograph in Figure 1, a female tourist, nearby the photogenic
Ladakhi woman, offered the Ladakhi her camera while pointing toward the Frenchman.
The Ladakhi woman accepted the camera and began pointing it toward the French
photographer, and me, behind him. She was imitating or “ventriloquating” the actions of
tourists she had seen so many times before. Figure 2, another photograph taken by me,
Citations
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Emily Höckert1, Monika Lüthje, Heli Ilola•
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TL;DR: In this article, a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis of tourists' accounts of tourist photography is presented, focusing on how encountering the face of the other interrupts the photographer and calls for heightened responsibility and reflection.
Abstract: Abstract The article illuminates one of the central ethical questions concerning tourist photography: the ways in which tourists photograph local people in tourist destinations. In line with the previous research on tourist photography, the study suggests that tourists’ experiences of responsible behaviour become continuously re-defined and negotiated in relations with others. Through a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis of tourists’ accounts, the study focusses on the role of the face in photography; that is, how encountering the face of the other interrupts the photographer and calls for heightened responsibility and reflection. Drawing on the Levinasian idea of ethics as being-for-the-other, the article visualizes relational ethics that do not originate from the tourist’s gaze, but from the face of the other.

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TL;DR: The interplay between imagination and human mobility is explored in this article, where the authors present theoretical, empirical and methodological explorations on how imagination and mobility shape each other, and how the creative process of imagining alternative worlds and lives in turn affect people's capacity and possiblity to move.
Abstract: This special issue explores the interplay between imagination and human mobility. It presents theoretical, empirical and methodological explorations on how imagination and mobility shape each other. It asks questions such as: how is imagination triggered or blocked by people’s experience of mobility? How does the creative process of imagining alternative worlds and lives in turn affect people’s capacity and (im)possibilities to move? This editorial, in particular, highlights the contributions of the various articles and addresses a series of emerging ways of studying the interplay between mobility and imagination. It presents the specific ways through which the various articles of this issue offer important explorations on the imagined and potential character of mobility, and on the always changing and shifting nature of imagination on the move. Mobility is a crucial aspect of human life. As more than mere physical movement, mobility relates to the act of moving (Cresswell, 2006; Kaufmann, 2002) entangled with power, norms and meaning (Frello, 2008), and involving social, material, temporal and symbolic components that make movement (im)possible. The capacity and potential to move can be located ‘in the dreaming of, planning for, or fear of mobility’ (Leivestad, 2016, p. 143), in our fantasying on where, when and how we move. The field of possibilities to move physically can be infused with the act of imagining origins, traversals and destinations, with the aspiration for other lives and future selves. Or a person’s imagination can be triggered, blocked or changed across time by the actual experience of (im)mobility. For one can move all around the word, and still have a limited imaginative experience; or conversely, one may be placebound, be stuck in an endless present and have the feeling that life

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  • ...In cultural psychology, although there have been studies on tourism (Gillespie, 2006a, 2006b), pilgrimage (Beckstead, 2010; Murakami, 2014) or migration (Abreu & Hale, 2011; Bhatia & Ram, 2009; Kadianaki, 2014), these have very little been addressed in terms of mobility....

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Abstract: Any use you make of these documents or images must be for research or private study purposes only, and you may not make them available to any other person. Authors control the copyright of their thesis. You will recognise the author's right to be identified as the author of this thesis, and due acknowledgement will be made to the author where appropriate. You will obtain the author's permission before publishing any material from their thesis.

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  • ...MacCannell (1989) goes one step further and argues that the touristic code creates hostility as each tourist wishes that the other tourists were not ‘there’. And yet our observations of domestic tourists at two Danish caravan sites suggest that tourists at these sites do not scorn other tourists, but instead actively seek the company of other tourists. Danish caravan sites are mostly visited by (both extended and nuclear) families, and Obrador (2011) points to the fact that ‘the very notion of the family, whose place is the home is contradictory to dominant understandings of tourism’ (p....

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  • ...MacCannell (1989) goes one step further and argues that the touristic code creates hostility as each tourist wishes that the other tourists were not ‘there’....

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  • ...Before turning to the findings, it must be mentioned that concordant with previous studies, the tourists in this study were very self-reflective about both tourism as a general phenomenon and their own touristic practices (Gillespie, 2006; MacCannell, 2001; Prebensen et al., 2003)....

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  • ...Gillespie (2006) claims that tourists criticize and scorn other tourists, Crick (1989) finds that ‘many tourists claim that they are not tourists themselves and that they dislike and avoid other tourists’ (p. 307) and Culler (1990) suggests that ‘to be a tourist is in part to dislike tourists (both…...

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