Paper short abstract:

Photography and tourism semiotics, the role of shared, collective, and personal visual records of time and place in research. The desire to record elements of the travel career in photographs.

Paper long abstract:

Photographs are an important research resource, authenticating experiences in the context of tourism and anthropology. Urry (1990: pp.138 - 139) asserts that photography and tourism are inextricably linked, and that there is an insatiability of the photographing eye, in recording the experiences of tourism.

Photography allowed the individual to record elements of their holiday, for example; transport destinations, attractions and people. Batchen (1999: p.212) suggests that photography, and the photographic image is often held to be, 'a proof of that things being'. The photograph in tourism is significant in terms of memories, recording, storing and subsequently retrieving and recalling elements of the experience.

This paper utilises a photographic archive in the form of a personal snapshot album entitled: Holiday at Cliff Cottage in the month of June, 1912. It encapsulates a period, the bell epoque, and a leisurely holiday in Devon on the eve of the First World War, an era described by Pimlott (1976: p. 238) as when holidays were a luxury for many, 'saved and planned for during the rest of the year, and enjoyed in retrospect when they are over'. The photographs possess a narrative and aesthetic value, as sequentially they relate (with minimal captions) the holiday events.

The value of the photographic image issignificant in social history, and the historiography of tourism. Photographs as a record, capture a moment in time, and are an invaluable resource for the tourism and visual anthropology researcher, allowing us to view images from the distance of time and association.