Theatre of Tourism – Fran Dale and Jenny Rudd

In their research into the social aspects of tourist photography, Haldrup and Larsen (Baerenholdt, J.  et al, 2004) refer to the Social Constructionist, Gergen, who claims that people make sense of their lives through narratives.  At at time when families are becoming increasingly fragmented, it seems the greater the need to produce narratives of the ideal family which Haldrup and Larsen argue is one of the reasons why families travel.  They maintain that performing tourist photography has become more than just documenting the holiday, that it is part of the theatre the family constructs to create the illusion of being together and whole.  Properly staged the photograph will ensure that no matter how disappointing the actual event was, it will be projected as a future memory of family harmony.

Inspired by the artist, Suzanne Moxhay’s techniques (http://www.suzannemoxhay.com), we have been experimenting with the idea of creating our own “theatre”, using scanned postcard images enlarged and fixed to transparent sheets to form the backdrop.  The scene has then been photographed to produce the image seen here. We’ll continue to experiment with the technique, one of the challenges being to get the scales and perspectives correct, before introducing our “tourists” to the performance.

Bibliography

Baerenholdt, J.  et al (2004)  Performing Tourist Places, Aldershot, Ashgate