Tourism is “opening up” more and more places, and these trips are “producing” more and more photographic images of the same sights and pathos formulas. Metropolises like Paris, Athens or Vienna, but also harbor towns like the Norman Granville or the Greek place of pilgrimage on the island of Tinos are drowning in mountains of Instagram-ready vacation pictures. Is there a way out of this situation other than denial?
On a journey to exemplary European locations of the image onslaught, Sevrina Giard and Theo Steiner explored how connections can be made to a place beyond the clichés. In an interdisciplinary collaboration, the media designer and video artist developed the Jemandsland (literally Somebody’s Land) method with the design theorist and exhibition curator: In a mixture of street photography, “visual studies,” urban ethnology, and artistic research, the two collect stories that find stories. For each place they give themselves specific, individually tailored stories, visual metaphors whose thematic orientations focus the gaze and trigger unexpected results.