Events Calendar

RAI Photographic Salon – Photography and Tourism
Thursday 30 January 2020, 06:00pm - 08:00pm
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January 30, 2020, 6-8 pm, Royal Anthropological Institute

The RAI Photographic Committee invites you to attend our third photography salon, a convivial and informal evening of conversation and drinks exploring the relationship between anthropology and photography.

This salon explores tourism and especially the role of photography in it. How do images participate in the making and unmaking of tourism imaginaries and tourist experiences? Can photography produce anything beyond what anthropologists critique as stereotyping and Orientalism in the context of tourism? Does social media photography change the visual modalities and experiences afforded by travel? What is photography’s role in negotiating or heightening hierarchy, hospitality and tension in the context of tourist encounters? What is the role of postcards in contemporary tourism and how can we rethink the roles they play in people’s lives?

We invite you to discuss these issues through your own photographic practice or research and your own experiences as a guest, a bystander or a host holding, (ab)using or resisting cameras and their images. The salon take the format of a pecha kucha style presentation so be prepared to bring a single image from your practice/ research and to speak for up to three minutes exploring its position in constructing, partaking or negating tourist experiences.

All are welcome and we particularly encourage researchers and students who have been experimenting with cameras in the field or are looking to pursue ethnographic projects that prioritize photography and other kinds of imagery.

The Salon will also be host to the launch of Konstantinos Kalantzis’ Tradition in the Frame: Photography, Power and Imagination in Sfakia,Crete (2019, Indiana University Press), a book exploring experiences and fantasies of tradition through visual culture in Crete.

Please email to register interest.

Photo by K. Kalantzis, 2007 - Sfakian man Manousos Kaftanis is being photographed by a passing traveller at a kiosk in the mountains where he often frequently hosts hikers.