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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Thirty Four: Photographing the tourist in all of us > Boat 11, Li River Cruise, Guilin, China, 2006
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05-APR-2006

Boat 11, Li River Cruise, Guilin, China, 2006

Still another tour group, yet this one is far different from the group in the previous image. There is less regimentation, more people, more excitement, and far greater diversity in dress and attitude. This group is crowded together on the top deck of a riverboat, viewing some of the most spectacular scenery on earth – the towering jagged domes of limestone that line China’s Li River. You can sense its energy from this image. We make pictures such as this not as works of photographic art – there is no real sense of composition to this image. Its value as expression rests in its chaotic, random form. The jumbled image works to reinforce the act of 25 or 30 people all viewing the same thing, each in their own way. We may not see what they are seeing, but we can certainly feel what they must be feeling. People point, look, photograph, wonder, and even chat. By turning our cameras on groups behaving as groups, we can increase the variety of human values and incongruous relationships present in an image.

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Phil Douglis21-Apr-2006 23:11
You are right, Celia. I leave out the object of their desire here -- and challenge the viewer's imagination in the process. That's a form of abstraction, isn't it? Even though this image is jammed with people, it still makes use of abstraction by omitting what they were looking at!
Cecilia Lim21-Apr-2006 20:18
I love the chaos, energy and the buzz coming from this group of sight-seeers, whose diversity in expression, colour and mood is made even more apparent when juxtaposed against two bands of solid colour of green at the top, and blue on the bottom. What makes this image even more intriguing for me is the fact that you've chosen to omit what they were looking at, leaving it completely open to our imagination...
Phil Douglis19-Apr-2006 00:22
Thanks, Ramma -- you are right. This picture tells us how these people about the beauty they are seeing pass before them.
Ramma 18-Apr-2006 20:07
Its a great shift from the usual travel photographs one gets to see. Different perspective ! Sometimes we see photographs of monuments , statues that are supposedly very famous or popular with the tourists, but its only when one sees a photograph like This does 1 actually understand the degree of popularity. Nice way of pointing it !
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