There is a lot of magic in travel photography.
But there is also a lot of staged candidness.
This is not a new topic, but I believe it remains little known (or deliberately ignored) among photographers: travel photography that becomes the artificial stage for lives far removed from our own.
This has already been extensively discussed by Etienne Bossot in his article The Library of the Fake Photos published in Peta Pixel. It is well known that this kind of images, as easy to digest as they are comfortable, and as suspicious as they are perfect, dominate Instagram and the covers of major media outlets. But they are only appearance: beautiful on the outside, empty on the inside. Travel photography turned into the ultimate symbol of fast food. Or, as Etienne puts it: “suspiciously tasty but little nutrition.”
AI-generated photos as representative examples of the topic: be suspicious of perfection and symmetry
The real issue is that these photos, in addition to exaggerating cultures (and I would dare to say almost bordering on parody) that are not their own, encourage the proliferation of posed scenes presented as spontaneous.
The problem? On one had, viewers trust the photographer’s skill and visual delivery; but if the image is not accompanied by an honest explanation, what they receive is a carefully staged and artificial illusion, equally divided, sold as organic moments.
On the other hand, social media, where these photos circulate and end up in the mire of the most overused clichés, amplifies the visual fantasy: each “like” reinforces predictable, easily digestible stereotypes. Ethical responsibility, then, does not rest solely with the person who takes the photograph, but also with the one who consumes it (who may well be another photographer), as they are encouraged to reproduce it and claim it under their own name, fueling a cycle of calculated and superficial exoticism.
Real scene: landscapes of Ladakh with its chörtens.
It may seem harmless, but this trend exposes a knot of ethical issues that deserve attention, as it pushes us to promote an exotism shaped according to the visual appetites of a few. The hegemonic Western eye, once again at work, constructs a curated discourse over what does not belong to it. It decides for others. It dictates how otherness should be seen and consumed.
And so, with a single click, we package humanity’s astonishing cultural diversity into a simplistic, shallow narrative. The plurality of a country or community is reduced to a few biased abstractions within a colorful catalog, ready to be consumed by foreign eyes.
As holders of the Western identity card we believe we have the “legitimate” duty to record (read the irony) the myriad of cultures under our paternalistic umbrella of white saviors, as if they could not survive on their own in collective memory, despite the fast and relentless globalization they are exposed to, and for which, in part, we are responsible.
Precisely because we forget this, it is worth remembering from time to time: cultures are fluid, multifaceted, interwoven, open to one another, and full of internal diversity. They are not immutable essences, static entities to be placed in a museum and preserved like embalmed specimens. If we truly care about traditions, languages, rituals, and minority communities, our attention should turn away from the camera viewfinder and toward the suitcase of values we carry, as well as the political decisions we empower, which determine not only their survival, but their capacity to flourish on their own terms.
We are also responsible for the daily ethical exercise of remembering that people are not objects to be styled, manipulated, or exploited under our lens, like a conductor’s baton. They do not exist in this miracle we call life to become raw visual material for someone else’s narrative, no matter how beautiful it may seem. They are interdependent individuals, each with a name, a life, and a desire to be happy and care for those they love.
If we continue to promote scenarios that freeze societies into limited ideas, we leave them trapped between the obligation to appear “authentic” and the condemnation for failing to fit into the imaginary we have imposed.
This is what bothers me. I see it from the inside. And I call it out.
And with this knowledge in hand, as photographers and creators, we have three options.
Real scene: Locals waiting for the start of the Sani Nasjal festival in Zanskar.
We can train our visual and photographic vocabulary with dedication, developing empathy, sharpening our gaze, observing attentively, cultivating curiosity, and honing our social skills to capture humanity’s complexity in all its spontaneity…
We can choose honesty by embracing transparency in the image-making process, explaining how an image is constructed, how it was taken, and what its context, intention, and place within travel photography are…
Or we can take full responsibility for protecting the integrity of our creativity, resisting the urge to fabricate, over-direct, or flatten the richness of human experience for the sake of a consumable image. By doing so, we honor the spontaneity, unpredictability, and depth that make photography and travel truly meaningful.
Only then can we build an authentic intercultural and visual dialogue, with respect as our banner, where photography functions as a bridge rather than a showcase of prefabricated exotisms tailored to our biased appetites.
Interesting resources:
– Research Gate
– Science Direct
– New York Times
– PetaPixel
– DIY Photography
