When it comes to understanding a place or a culture, how do people get the first impression of it and what’s the most preferred way to do so? Language? Current events? Entertainment? Or local sights? In the age of social media and convenient traffic, people get the first impression through tourist destinations presented by photography. It is a medium of highly realistic visual representation and extensively shared on social media; and travelling is the most craved way to experience a place.
The irony of travel and photography
When understanding a place or culture, popular sights first come to our mind. We can see photographs of different sights across the globe on social media, which attracts viewers to visit and take photos of them. However, with the urges to share and constantly finding popular pretty spots that are amplified by social media, it seems that people want to capture what they expect in the destination more than what there really is. This is nothing new and totally normal, so what’s the problem?
The issue here is that the desire to experience the popular instagrammable spots and post the photos on social media somehow drives people unintentionally to strengthen the stereotypical representation of a place, making the travel and cultural experience fragmented and people unable to understand a place in a more comprehensive way. Photography, a medium that is intended to show the more ‘realistic’ side of a subject, is reduced to a cliché. Ironically, people's understanding of a place or a culture becomes limited in the expectation they have, i.e. in the echo chamber and homogenized again. What originally intends to make us understand a place unfortunately becomes a barrier, even if the web provides a lot of information for us to create journeys.
Street photography’s opportunity with social media
So how can we tackle this in the age of social media and photography content being ultra-highly accessible in both consumption and production? A mindset of practising street photography could be one of the answers, accompanied by a change of expectation on travelling. Street photography in its essence captures people and anything related to them in public space in a more or less unstaged manner. The photographer goes to different and lesser-known paths to observe or just feel a place. It is the antithesis of ‘doing it for the gram’. It shares the same spirit of flâneur, a person who wanders in the city to observe the surroundings and contemporary life. It opens more flexible ways to interpret a culture or a place, to define what it means to the person from a personal, societal and cultural level. Disclaimer: there is absolutely nothing wrong about capturing images of popular sights; there’s a reason they are iconic, for instance the visual appeal and historical significance, moreover, travel photography has its own immense value by showcasing the best of a place to people across the globe, and in some circumstances the genre overlaps with street photography. The focus here is about utilizing its particular mindset to take one step further to understand a place. Combined with the double-edged sword, i.e. social media, there can be more ways to understand a place. These days, people seek different ways to experience a place at a slower pace and share the experience as detailed guides on social media, encouraging people to step out of their comfort zone to explore a place. For instance, in China, the activity is called ‘citywalk’. Its rising popularity, combined with the steady growth of the street photography niche, can let people understand different facets of a place.
There is no such thing as ‘the right way’ to understand a culture, and it is all fine if we initially visit a place because of some ‘stereotypical’ sights, after all it is the first step that motivates people to explore the world. We just need to ask ourselves if what we see at the face value is all it gets, and have an open mindset towards travel and culture. With high availability of photographic devices, the rise of travelling at a slower pace, and a mindset of practising street photography, they can be an aid to understanding a place and cultural discussion, breaking through the social media algorithm and what we are fed.