The Tourist #18

P.178


“The consumption and production of images become (sic) all important, and participating in events is tantamount to seeing and capturing them as spectacular ‘imagescapes’ (Sontag, 1979) Sometimes it seems that each object or person photographed becomes equivalent to any other, equally interesting or uninteresting.”


Having learned how to use a camera I sometimes suggest to my students a little game where they can play out various routines. You can make up your own ones but mine are roughly as follows


Routine Game  -


  1. See a sunset. Make a photo.

  2. Shit into a costa coffee cup in a busy shopping centre. Make photograph.

  3. Piss into a costa coffee cup in a busy shopping centre. Make photograph.

  4. Go to pals wedding. Make photograph.

  5. Go to asda and photograph people fighting at the reduced price food section.

  6. Find dead body. Take photograph.

  7. Murder someone. Take photograph of the dead body.

  8. Murder everyone. Take a photograph of the dead bodies.

  9. Take a photograph of the photograph of the dead bodies.

  10. Make love. Take a photograph.

  11. Pay someone to make love. Take a photograph.

  12. Take a photograph of other people making love.

  13. Pay other people to make love and take a photograph.

  14. Shit onto a photograph of people making love who you have paid in a busy shopping centre.

  15. Have a passport photograph made.

  16. Pay the money to have a passport photo made but step out of the booth so that it doesn’t photograph anyone at all.

  17. Pay the money to have a passport photo made but step out of the booth so that it doesn’t photograph anyone at all. Do not collect the photographs. Take a photograph of the photographs ready for collection in the little hole.

  18. Pay the money to have a passport photo made but step out of the booth so that it doesn’t photograph anyone at all. Do not collect the photographs. Do not take a photograph of the photographs ready for collection in the little hole.

  19. Take a photograph of the ingredients on the back of the Pea and Ham soup in Marks and Spencers in the station across from the passport photo booth having paid the money to have a passport photo made but having stepped out of the booth so that it hasn’t photograph anyone at all, not having collected the photographs or taken a photograph of the printed passport photographs, ready for collection in the wee hole.

  20. Take a photo of your friend in the street.


Present the above photographs to absolutely fucking anyone and ask them if the contents of these photographs are, in their mind, conceivably “equal”.

If they respond - “Yes” suggest that they immediately section themselves and then do not speak to them further or ever again.