Don't Let The Vacation Post Ruin Your Vacation
Are you photographing yourself living your life or living your life to be photographed? Plus, Americans in Paris, 'The New Tourist' and NYC real estate.
I’m standing by the water in Reykjavik, admiring the mountain skyline when I overhear a couple young women next to me. “I’m so bad at taking photos, I can take more if you want,” one of the women says to her friend as she hands back her phone. In a city where the only clothing shops I’ve seen sell gorpcore and it’s currently 13 degrees, the woman who just had her friend take her photos is wearing a thin slit dress with heels. “You didn’t angle them properly,” She says to her friend, begrudgingly gesturing her phone back to her to take more photos. So the apologetic friend tries again. “Higher! Higher!” The modelling friend demands. When she takes her phone back to review, she says to her friend, “I told you above the knee!” The friend apologizes. “Forget it, you’re done,” she says lightheartedly. After a pause, she says almost an afterthought, out of obligation, “I can take photos of you if you want.”
The self-conscious friend is just as uncomfortable in front of the phone camera as she is behind it. “Tell me how to pose!” She says, awkwardly trying to align each shot with a slightly different tilt of the head. “We’re losing the sun,” the demanding friend says, their cue to give up. After 20 minutes of this seemingly unsuccessful photoshoot, the two friends walk away, having not once stopped to take in the view. I pictured them on the rest of their trip. Would they actually enjoy each other’s company? Or were they simply using each other to fill the image of what they consider to be a fun girl’s trip.
The next day, I take a short bus ride to the Sky Lagoon, a hot spring I’m told is a less crowded version of the Blue Lagoon. When I’m feeling really rebellious on my work trips, I give myself permission to not get the shot for the story and simply just experience the moment, without documenting it. As I’m entering the pool, I realize I’ll need to bring my camera into the water to get the shot—the perfect excuse to go device-less. I wade into the steaming water sheltered by volcanic boulders, anticipating an authentic, phone-free experience. But then I turn the corner to see the full scene of the infinity pool overlooking the ocean, filled with people, with their phones. Turns out there are these water-resistant phone pouches you can wear around your neck. Fearful their phones will still get wet, everyone who has their phone is holding it up like they are raising their hand in a school classroom, making it easy to gauge how many people have their phone and how many don’t.
I swim to the water’s edge and try to hone in on the view but it’s hard to ignore the bustle of people taking photos around me. I can count on one hand how many people are like me, simply taking in the moment. As I look around, there are women filming themselves talking to the camera, friends taking each other’s photos, and couples taking romantic selfies. It feels like everyone is experiencing the moment through their phone.
After a long flight from Portugal, I land back in Toronto excited to be freed of Instagram posts-in-the-making. We’re shuffled onto a bus to transfer us from the plane to the airport. As the bus sits on the hot tarmac, I overhear the young couple on my right. “She looked nothing like this in real life,” the boyfriend says, gesturing his phone, which I presume is displaying the girl in question’s Instagram, to his girlfriend. The girlfriend shrugs. She looks down to her own phone, in its millennial pink case clutched by her pink-nailed hand, as the other holds her pink passport holder. The boyfriend squeezes her forearm like a mother investigating their child’s body for abnormalities. “Ugh, I don’t want to have to put on a suit tomorrow, I already have the Sunday scaries,” he complains. “I hope the cleaning lady is gone when we get back.”
On my left is the mirror image of the young couple on my right, but 20 years older. “Do you like this one more or this one?” The woman asks her partner, intercepting his gaze out the bus with her phone. He shrugs with indifference, his eyes glazed. She brings the phone back to its position right in front of her eyes and continues to curate, what I presume to be, their vacation post. Her hair fraying out of its slumped bun, worry lines wrinkling her forehead, eyes wild—every few minutes she shoves the phone back in his face for his opinion, of which he expresses none. She looks as distressed as a mother with a young child but there is no child, just an Instagram post, that is being treated like a life-or-death situation.
Back in Brooklyn, at a photo festival under the Brooklyn Bridge, I run into an old friend from photo school. I ask her if she’s still doing what we went to school for—documentary photography. Like me, her answer is sort of. We agree that we both don’t feel 100% right doing it anymore. The long-form photojournalism stories we learned to do in school require us shadowing a person for extended periods of time but every project eventually ends, and then what? Who benefits most from that documentation? And do we compensate our subjects for their participation, if at all?
The very nature of taking a photo is extractive. Light extracted and imprinted into physical form that is then circulated and made meaning of. If the act of taking the photo is extraction, then what is the act of having your photo taken? This friend and I talk about how we want to use photography to give rather than take. In the case of portraiture, the experience of having your photo taken can be used intentionally as a means of processing and healing. I know this because so much of taking a portrait is really just coaching. A friend of mine many years ago told me I should start a portraiture business of taking photos of people who are extremely insecure having their photo taken (of which I know many). This former classmate of mine tells me she has started doing something similar with her own somatic photography practice. She frames herself more as a healer now than a photographer.
Whether you’re having your photo taken or taking the photo, focusing on the process results in an entirely different experience. The problem is when we take the photo already focused on the outcome; when we prioritize the end over the means. Sure, the outcome is at the back of my mind when I’m taking photos on my work trips (mainly I’m considering whether the photo I’m about to take will be relevant to the story I’ll write). But it’s really secondary. I take photos to engage with the scene before me; to notice the light, the colours, the lines, the movement; the physical forms before me; to be more present not less. My mind is never more in the current moment than when I’m looking through the viewfinder, dialling in the f-stop, shutter speed and ISO as fast as I can before the moment is gone. I don’t want to assume that every traveller taking a photo isn’t using the act of taking a photo to be more present, but I’m willing to bet the majority are not.
I’m afraid the act of capturing an image is most often used to bolster one’s self-image. When every moment becomes a photo you might post, you begin to exist in the future. The single image becomes a curated carousel and before you know it you’re picturing the visual summary dump of your month before the month is even over. If you’re focused on the outcome when you take the photo, then who is the photo really for? Is it for you or your audience? Become too focused on the online version of yourself you envision and you start doing things for the photos; living your life to be documented, rather than documenting yourself living your life.
We think of Instagram as a free app, but how many of us are paying for the app in vacations? Sam Sanders said this at a live recording of Vibe Check at the beginning of the summer and I can’t stop thinking about it. Without Instagram and social media, I question whether we’d travel to the same destinations (Italy, Greece, etc.) and act the way we do once we get there. We’re at our worst, as travellers, and I’d even argue as humans, when we’re living for the idealized online avatar of ourselves. I wish I could forget the scene of everyone holding their phones out of the water at the Sky Lagoon, the moment I realized just how detached from reality we’ve become. Obviously we can’t all be luddites but I think we can be more mindful; more curious with ourselves. Next time you’re planning a vacation, ask yourself why you chose that destination, and once you’re there, every time you feel the urge to hold that phone up to your face, maybe ask yourself: why am I taking the photo and am I fully here?
Best,
Anna
Published📝
Of everywhere I’ve travelled, no country has more etiquette than Japan. As someone who can’t stand outdoor shoes in the house, I appreciated the strict adherence to changing to slippers indoors (some places even require you to put on a new pair of slippers for each room you enter). I also fell in love with the toilets that would automatically lift the lid for me to sit down to a heated seat and then clean themselves upon my exit. And on the note of cleanliness —not once did I see a public garbage bin. At first, I wondered if this would encourage more littering. But talking to a local I found out everyone just carries their garbage with them until they get home.
Reading 📖
Long Reads:
The way we take photos when we travel is arguably contributing to the moral unease people have begun feeling about tourism. Protests against tourism in Barcelona, Japan’s new regulations to combat overtourism—tourists have become so poorly behaved, many locals are fed up. Then there’s the climate implications of travel: should we be polluting the air with our flights, the oceans with our cruises or visiting vulnerable ecosystems like Antartica? As a travel journalist, I think about these questions a lot, and so I loved reading a book that grapples with them: The New Tourist by Paige McClanahan. Unlike the viral New Yorker piece that suggests we should stop travelling altogether, McClanahan offers a more optimistic outlook.
“Tourism has the capacity to shape how travelers imagine other countries. McClanahan dedicates an entire chapter to soft power—a government’s political ability to influence other states—because, as she points out, our travels change where we’re likely to spend our money. Tourism has elevated Iceland, for instance, from a country that North Americans knew little about to a recognized player on the world stage. And Saudi Arabia plans to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into its tourism industry with a goal of attracting a planned 150 million visitors a year by 2030. For a nation, especially one striving to change its international reputation, the benefits of tourism aren’t merely financial. ‘The minute you put your feet on the ground,’ an expert on ‘nation branding’ tells McClanahan, ‘your perception starts changing for the better.’” - Chelsea Leu writes in The Atlantic.
🇫🇷 French writer Camille Bordas’ short story, Chicago on the Seine, for The New Yorker.
“I often thought that that was the worst thing about dying: that all your last positions and opinions became fixed forever, that you couldn’t change your mind anymore. It made you look stupid.”
🦒 And another New Yorker piece, but non-fiction: David Sedaris goes on a last-minute safari.
“My big fear before going on safari was that I wouldn’t be able to exercise. We weren’t allowed to venture on foot beyond the confines of our camp, so I worried that in order to meet my daily Apple Watch minimum of ten thousand steps, I’d have to walk back and forth across our deck for hours on end. It seemed my watch mistook the bumpiness of the road, and the jostling it gave rise to, for walking. This was great for my step count but awful for writing.”
Articles:
🤳 Has social media made sightseeing deeply uncool?
“This obsession with gaining cultural capital through travel adds so much pressure to share a perfectly curated (but still casual, woke-up-like-this) dump that it holds the potential to undo any relaxation and calm that the vacation brought in the first place,” writes Darshita Goyal.
🎒 The book bag that binds Japanese society.
🛩 The airport is the new third place.
😂 Answers to ‘Where are you from?’ translated.
“Canada.”
I’ve stopped expecting Americans to know Canadian cities.“Um, Canada?”
I’m an American travelling abroad in an election year.
Watching 📺
Up until recently, I’ve only ever watched the West Coast real estate reality shows like Selling Sunset and Selling The O.C.. With those, I was in it more for the drama than the real estate. The algorithm recently fed me Owning Manhattan, and I’m already hooked. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that the real estate market that terrifies me for its cutthroat competition would make for an extremely entertaining reality series. The show follows SERHANT, one of the biggest firms in NYC led by real estate mogul Ryan Serhant. With his intermittent fasting and optimization rhetoric, Serhant himself is insufferable. But his ruthless leadership makes for entertaining office politics. Unlike the West Coast series, I’m less interested in the drama here (of which there is plenty) and more in the real estate. I love getting to see inside some of the skyscrapers of the Manhattan (and Brooklyn) skyline I’ve only ever seen from the outside.
This feedback from Serhant to one of his agents shortly before firing him is perfect for today’s essay:
“You spend so much of your time trying to get noticed, instead of spending your time trying to be great. If you spent half your time trying to be great, you’d be so great, everyone would have to notice you.”
Listening 🎧
When you’re travelling, is your experience more a feeling of adventure or humiliation? For David Sedaris, it’s humiliation. Even after moving to France and learning the language, he found every day was filled with moments of embarrassment. In this episode of This American Life, Ira Glass follows Sedaris through a day in his life in Paris, which makes for pretty comical listening. The episode dedicated to America’s romanticization of the French city dates back to 2000 (you can hear it in how young both Glass and Sedaris sound), but I’d argue it’s no less relevant today. In the first act following Sedaris, many of his revelations about living in Paris could be taken as universal truths about travel. When Glass observes that the smallest human acts of kindness mean so much to Sedaris when he’s in Paris, he remarks, “It doesn’t take much to make me happy now, whereas before [at home], it took quite a lot.”
So, why do Americans love Paris so much? American Kristen Hohenadel, who, at the time of interview had lived in Paris for five years, says all her reasons are embarrassing and cliche—
“Paris is a stale dream. It's kind of like falling in love with the most obviously cute boy in the class, or a movie star. It's like being a groupie. And then you try to convince the other 25 women who he slept with last week, well, I really love him, and I think he loves me too.”
As Glass astutely observes, the problem with loving a city is that it doesn’t really love you back.