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Natacha de Mahieu reached the summit of the remote Obersee lake in the south-eastern corner of Germany in August 2021, surrounded by green mountains and spectacular waterfalls. It rained. “It wasn’t that fun to be there. “It was very cold and everything was wet,” De Mahieu, 26, said. she says, laughing from her home in Brussels.
Tourists came and took their own portraits against the view. De Mahieu noticed that as soon as someone stepped in front of the camera, they would shed their layers against the cold to convey the image of summer. In front of the camera: T-shirts, floating dresses. Behind him: swathes of padded jackets. Instagram was about reality.
D’Mahiu’s series Photo Theater of Authenticity explores the connection between tourism and spectacle, and how we play when we travel, especially when we think no one is watching. The photos comprise the thesis project for her master’s degree in documentary photography and bring together three of her most pressing issues: tourism, social media and climate change.
“I love to travel,” De Maheu says, recalling a trip to Bolivia at age 18 that sparked her interest in photography. “I’m also passionate about why we love travel and our motivations.” And “I spend a lot of time on social media,” she added. Scrolling through Instagram, De Mahieu began to feel that “everyone is going to the same place, using the same photographic compositions, the same colors.” The very generation Z artist is in a dilemma. Surrounded by endless digital content, she began to wonder if she could do something special.
And so de Maheu took that concern about diversity, and gave it a twist. She takes the perfect picture that tens of thousands have taken. But instead of doing what a camera-toting tourist might do when encountering a crowded destination—blocking out the other sightseers and projecting a picture of them alone surrounded by natural splendor—she added more people.
She started by identifying the most geotagged European tourist destinations on Instagram, including Lake Obersee, Turkey’s romantic Cappadocia region (famous for its hot air balloons), and Spain’s Bardenas Riles desert and cliffs. Streams (coves) in Marseille. During the summer, she travels to these destinations in a campervan, spending two days in each location. The first day is spent scouting the area and finding the best angle to shoot. The next day, she sets up her camera on a tripod and takes pictures for about an hour at every break, documenting the tourists coming and going. As she edits, she uses Photoshop to create a time-lapse collage that shows all the people who visited the area over 60 minutes. A finished image can take up to a week to perfect.
There is a version of this project that takes some of the most famous landmarks around the world: travelers on the Great Wall of China; Imagine hundreds moving the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But de Maheu deliberately chose destinations off the beaten track. “I wanted to show the impact of this kind of ‘invisible tourism’ on these places. When I say invisible, I mean you feel alone when you’re there. But more than an hour or in the afternoon, many people go there.”
It’s a comment on how social media can quickly turn a place into a must-see destination – an Instagram post shared by an influencer can open the floodgates – and also how this fame can have harmful environmental effects (in June this year, the Calanques of Marseille) National Park for first-time visitors to preserve the rock formations Closes the number. “Climate change is very real and very clear,” says De Maheu; It was “very natural” that her work responded to these concerns.
She does not see herself as independent from the culture that appears in her photos. De Mahieu likes to travel, and admits that she spends a lot of time on social networks; Even in her own photography, the beauty of Instagram (soft pastel colors, fixed composition that meets the default square shape – “I’m like: No! I don’t want to!”) feels a wide influence. Rather than standing in judgment, her photographs are playful invitations to think: about what we want when we leave the house; How our everyday decisions are influenced by the allure of a beautiful image and why, in a culture devoted to individualism, we all seem to wish ourselves in front of a little log cabin on the lake at its best in summer. With mountains and trees and open water – and absolutely no one.
CappadociaTurkey, November 2019
Tagged 2.2 m Times on Instagram (Based on the images tagged at the time location printing)
“Every day at sunrise, hot air balloons filled with tourists fly over the mountain valleys of the Cappadocia region in central Turkey,” said Natacha de Mahiu. “Here, travelers take selfies, and couples propose vintage cars in front of a professional photographer. In this series, I wanted to play with the line between reality and fiction: are these photos ‘real’ or ‘simulated’?
Calanques of MarseilleFrance, May 2021
It has been tagged 132,000 times
“The rocky limestone cliffs and emerald streams of the Calanques in the south of France attract more than 3 million visitors every year. Because the region is difficult to reach on foot, specially authorized boat trips are made for tourists, interrupting each other’s awakening.
Lac Blanc, ChamonixFrance, August 2021
Issued 44,200 times.
“Lac Blanc can be reached in a two-hour hike of 500 meters after a cable car ride to 1,877 meters, and offers stunning views of Mont Blanc in the Alps at the eastern tip of France. This collage is made up of photos taken over an hour.
Royal Bardenas Desert, Spain, June 2021
It has been tagged 96,200 times
“Bardenas Reales is a semi-desert landscape in the north of Spain. The Castildetierra rock formation seen here is featured in many Instagram portraits. I included myself in this photo because the series is a way for me to reflect on my own experiences as a tourist and photographer.
Verdun Gorge, France, July 2021
It has been tagged 216,000 times
“The Gorges du Verdun in south-east France is the largest river gorge in Europe and is becoming increasingly popular. I took this photograph from far and high to represent the landscape paintings of the Romantic era. “
Obersee, Germany, August 2021
It has been tagged 43,500 times
“The fisherman’s tent on the shore of the lake was absolutely incredible. Then came Instagram. This collage reflects the competition that occurs as each of us tries to find the perfect spot for a selfie.
Peneda-Geres National Park, Portugal, June 2021
It has been tagged 83,800 times
“This image was taken remotely in Portugal’s only national park using a wireless connection between my camera and my phone. If I get too close to my camera, I find that tourists politely step out of the frame. The only way I could capture this image was to leave my camera on a tripod and press the shutter remotely.
Pont d’Arc, Ardeche Gorgos, France, July 2021
It has been tagged 126,400 times
“An image of the Pont d’Arc, a large natural bridge in the Ardeche in southeastern France, was created from 80 minutes of photographs taken at the height of the tourist season. The final result, made up of 100 images, took over a week.”
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