Guilty or not guilty?

 Ta-da,
today, I'm going to talk briefly about pictures...yes, again,,,but pictures I took in Europe. (hahaha, so VERY different, huh?) Just to give you a context, these pictures were taken while on my honeymoon. The conventional honeymoon for a Korean couple would have been a 3-4 day trip to Hawaii, Guam, or the Maldives (and what a coincidence-- in the epilogue of Nixon's Slow Violence, Maldive is mentioned as a nation suffering from climate change..I just read that part yesterday). Anyways, so, before getting married, we considered that option as well. But, we wanted our trip to be long...so we calculated the cost of a 7 day trip to the conventional places...and came to this conclusion: we cannot afford such a trip! An extra day spent in a luxurious spa in Guam would be equivalent to a plane ticket to Europe. So, we digressed. And decided to go on a backpacking honeymoon to Europe. :) With the money we would have spent on 4 day at a luxurious spa (which I now am very curious about), we went to Europe for 4 full weeks. What a long honeymoon!

Back to the pictures. I bring these pictures to you, for while shifting through the photos, I realized that I did not feel ANY guilt at having taken "picturesque" photographs while in Europe. I didn't include any pics of people I "objectified" on European streets, but there are many. People in Antwerp were so fashionable, I could not help but go clickaticlack again. Some pictures include the typical figures such as a man dressed like Van Gogh or as a character from a hollywood movie. Some are just random street pictures of, say, a woman walking her cute dog. I should probably pull one up...wait a sec. (fumble fumble)

Like these. Random pictures from the trip.
And why don't they arouse the same guilty feeling, as do the pictures of Indian streets and people? (And I mean this, for me, not for everyone) Perhaps because despite its appealing aesthetics, it is not "exotic" or "Orientalistic" ? Hmm. Perhaps that IS the reason. Orientalistic= bad. Aestheticizing European streets= not as bad. I must have thought that, for some reason. Well, for a good reason, actually, for although both types of pictures certainly objectify the subject matters, I am not repeating the otherizing rhetoric of colonialism with the latter. Guilt always comes when I find myself putting myself in the place of the dominant, the powerful, the colonial, the neocolonial. When I am in Europe, even in such moments of exoticizing and otherizing, I am nothing similar to the Western explorer/administrator/writer/artist in the "heart of darkness". I don't mean to say this that I place myself purposely  there when I am in Asian countries, but I do become more conscious of my situatedness in such cases because when I was in India, my frame of thought/pictures were quite like that. This is, of course, my retrospective analysis of my thoughts and pictures. I was probably an excited traveler just as I was in Europe-- but no excuses, I had been trained to think from the perspective of the West, I wanted to bring the "colorful" to my pictures, just like the photographers that send their beautiful pictures to National Geographic (and other fancy magazines). Hmmm.

So, like I said-- no guilt when in Europe, probably because even if I had the same aesthetic manner, there, having the perspective of a modern traveler looking for an intriguing landscape seemed to do the objects of my photographic study, no harm at all. Maybe I was a little pesky. Maybe I was being the annoying tourist. But no qualms-- this is what tourists do, I thought. Why could I not have the same nonchalance when in India? The reasons above might explain a little, but it is something I'll have to keep pondering on. Not that blogging will get me there faster or that I'll spend the entirety of the blogathon thinking about it...

 Here is me, the annoying tourist. :p

And a random bike. If this bike was in India, it might have been perched next to a blue walled house with paint peeling off here and there. I mean, I shouldn't have to feel bad about the latter picture, if I don't feel guilty about this one. It's only a bike, right? But there is so more to this ambivalent feeling...

I'll run off, because I have to read Heidegger for class tomorrow.
Just enjoy the pictures, and don't mind my rambling too much. :)

2013. 2. 6.