In this context it is also worth noting that in 1884 it was Cook who made arrangements to transport 18,000 men up the Nile to aid General
Charles Gordon.
|
 |
 Nowadays tourism
can mean almost anything from a weekend break in a neighbouring town to a sea voyage to the Antarctic; a package tour to an Italian resort or a Sherpa-serviced,
backpacking expedition into the Himalayas; a week in which you never leave your Las Vegas hotel, a week touring half-a-dozen European capitals or a week tracking
animals in an African national park.
Whatever the geographic or chronological coordinates, one aspect of tourism is almost always present - image making. Indeed collecting
images of the world preceded the actual travelling. One researcher estimates that by 1880 “almost every middle-class household in Britain, the
USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand could boast a photographic collection that included images
of indigenous people...” Collecting visual souvenirs, still or moving, proves to be an activity more significant than it first appears.
In Godard’s Les Carabiniers (1963) two poor yokels are enticed into the royalist army by stories of potential pillage, rape and killing
but most of all by the chance of becoming wealthy. After a number of years the two return bringing tales of the riches they have brought back to their
womenfolk. What they are referring to is their booty, a chest full of postcards depicting all the wonders of the world both natural and man-made. They
have appropriated the world but grasped at an illusion. |
