The Anthro Knot

Synthetic Truths

Florea, Sorin. “Tourist.” Flickr, 6 May 2007, flic.kr/p/N17U6.

Dot, Fi. “Chernobyl.” Flickr, 17 May 2008, flic.kr/p/4QyBbS.

I've always been fascinated with cultural tourism for many reasons and that was my main focus when making this project. I wanted to create an image that forces the viewer/audience to think about and understand tourism to some extent and more specifically, the romanticization of a culture, region, and history of a people.

I wanted the synthetic image to meet a certain level of reality versus absurdity, hence using a photo of Chernobyl and then one of a tourist. I've never been to Chernobyl nor do I have any readily avaiable photos of a site that is dystopic enough for me to create contrasts against that of a tourist. I also have no readily avaiable photos of tourists of any kind. Ultimately, I had to use appropriated images as I had no way to take these sort of images in person at this time.