Photo-Tourism by Javier Reverte
A few weeks ago, in a magazine I can't remember, I came across a photograph that left me absolutely perplexed. It was taken in the Galapagos Islands and showed about twenty tourists - of course, all dressed in traveler attire, complete with safari hats - surrounding a small pool of greenish water where a giant tortoise was resting, hidden beneath its enormous shell. Not a single member of the group was without a camera. Additionally, some were using powerful zoom lenses, despite being less than three meters away from the animal. Of course, I respect anyone who approaches a tortoise to photograph it rather than tearing it apart to eat. But what on earth do they want to photograph it for? I think if I were a tortoise, I would charge for posing.
The phenomenon of photography never ceases to amaze me. Recently, after quite some time without visiting the most beautiful of cities, I spent several months living in Rome and, naturally, I returned to its magnificent museums and churches to admire all the wonders it holds. There have always been tourists in the Italian capital, probably dating back to classical antiquity, but I've never seen so many cameras in the city. At least one for each tourist. And some, in addition to their camera, occasionally used their mobile phones to take pictures.
Spending a moment in St. Peter's Basilica admiring Michelangelo's La Pietà, for example, required elbowing my way through furious tourists vying for space to take their photographs. And I wondered: what do they want to take a picture of when the sculpture looks so lovely on postcards? I love those temples and museums, which are few, where photography is not allowed. Coincidentally, they tend to be less crowded than the others.
Years ago, we used to laugh at the Japanese who came to Spain to photograph everything. If there were four members of a Japanese traveling family, each one brought their own camera. I remember once, in La Mancha, about forty years ago, how I laughed when I saw a tourist bus stop on a secondary road at the sight of a donkey. About fifty Japanese jumped out like crazy to photograph the little donkey, to the astonished gaze of its owner.
The curious thing about all this is that, about ten years ago, while I was wandering through the villages of the Almeria Alpujarra, I found myself photographing a donkey. And of course, I had no choice but to laugh at myself.
A decade ago, I visited Victoria Falls. There was a legion of tourists traversing the terraces that overlook the impressive waterfalls. I noticed a Spanish family consisting of a couple and their two teenage children. All four were wearing South African safari hats, and the father was rolling with a video camera. At each balcony overlooking the successive waterfalls, the mother and children posed in front of the current waterfall while the father filmed them. Then he would say, 'That's it!' And they would move on to the next waterfall, hardly having looked at what they left behind. They would have a chance at home to admire the falls.
In any case, one can somewhat get used to elbowing through photographing tourists to make space for observing La Pietà. However, what is difficult to get used to is when a friend, upon returning from a trip, invites you to dinner with a group of people and insists, at dessert, on showing you all his videos and photographs. Never do this, dear reader: none of your friends will come to one of your dinners to see you smiling in front of some waterfalls or posing next to a donkey.