City sites and sights: using artists’ approaches in subverting the tourist gaze

Todd, Louise

Abstract

Increasingly, travel and tourism practices have become a strategy for taking and sharing photographs. This is particularly apparent through the exponential growth of digital social media platforms as means of recording and displaying tourism settings and experiences on an instant basis. My presentation proposes an evolving methodology for subverting and extending today’s photo-normative tourist gaze (Urry, 1990). This uses an autoethnographic approach alongside the use of selected artists’ practices. I have chosen sites and sights to visit in selected cities and recorded the act of gazing in responding to the city, as a researcher, an artist and a tourist. In exploring my own sensory response to these city sites and sights, I have drawn from the ideas and work of visual artists and writers who engage with cities. Having explored multi-sensory means of recording places and spaces through drawing and other arts-based approaches, I have produced a series of my own work. This responds to the city and presents a subverted and extended tourist gaze of sites and sights. In my presentation, I will discuss a selection of this work, which is currently in progress, and I will reflect upon my research process as it continues to develop.

Citation

Todd, L. (2019, April). City sites and sights: using artists’ approaches in subverting the tourist gaze. Paper presented at Visual Methods & Ethnography in Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series, Edinburgh Napier University

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Visual Methods & Ethnography in Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series
• Start Date: Apr 3, 2019
• Deposit Date: Feb 24, 2020
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2569679