I have had this picture on computer for several years, and could not recall where/when I downloaded it. I used Google image reverse search. I do not own copyright, and will remove it if requested.
To photograph is in some way to appropriate the object being photo-graphed. It is a power/knowledge relationship. To have visual knowledge of an object is in part to have power, even if only momentarily, over it. – John Urry in The Tourist Gaze.
I picked up a book, what seemed like a bog-standard picture book, a colourful picture essay, of KwaZulu Natal, a province of South Africa that had since the 1970s prided itself (humorously) in being “the last outpost of the British empire”. The book, Scenic KwaZulu Natal, by Roger and Pat De La Harpe, was explicitly about the “scenery”. That, anyway, is what the title tells us. We should probably take the photographers and writers at their word.
Except, photographs, the making and viewing of pictures, are rarely free from specific points of views. This applies as much to documentary photography as it does to tourism, or scenic, photography. It is perspectivism that explains what we focus on and what to frame in composition. In this respect, there is no such thing as a truly objective photograph (or photographer) because each image (and act of photographing) reflects the subjective reality of the person who made the picture. I grabbed a series of pictures of the pictures in the book, and found the framing, the tourist gaze, unsettling and unsurprising.
In the pictures, the landscape of KwaZulu Natal is beautifully displayed. It’s hard to miss that. The problem is that the indigenous people, presumably Zulu people, and the Indian community are exoticised and fetishized. They are part of the tourist experience; part of the scenery. In the pictures, white people are seeing gazing at the beauty of the landscape, enjoying activities like bungee jumping and golfing on perfectly manicured greens and fairways. In the golfing picture, black people are caddies or secondary figures, props, in the game of golf enjoyed by the white man in Africa.
Read
- The Tourist Gaze by John Urry
- Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag