The Tourist Ideal

As a native Floridian, I am very familiar with tourists. They always seem to have that dumb looking expression of awe and wonder, and they literally take pictures of everything. I've never really understood this, why take so many pictures? The time you spend with your head in your phone, taking pictures should be used for making memories because after all, that's why you came in the first place. But then I read these essays by Joerg Colberg, and they gave me insight as to why photography is so important to memory. He speaks of the photographs we take on our phones, and how like our memories, "they are fleeting, they can be manipulated easily, and by their very nature, there are a lot of them, existing in some badly organized state." Over a short period of time, the memory might be distorted and "edited" in a way. Which explains the tourists annoying fascination with photography. Many tourists may never go back to the place they visited,  making their memories scarce in the near future, so they take as many pictures as they can. And when they look back on those images they might recall the feelings and other sweet memories of that time. Those memories come back even stronger when you are the photographer, because in your mind you kind of see your self as an artist and this is your work. "Is it then surprising how much we revere our own, how much energy we put into them?"

Please check these essays out they are really well written:

http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/extended/archives/photography_and_memory/

http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/extended/archives/photography_and_memory_part_2/