Monument Valley, Instagram, and the closed circle of representation

I spent five days on the Arizona Utah border, photographing Monument Valley and the surrounding areas as part of a group of eight undertaking a landscape photography workshop under the direction of a Navajo guide. Observing where our guide was taking us, and watching and talking to other tourist photographers, I was reminded of John Urry's concept of the "tourist gaze" and the idea that tourists see destinations in terms of the promotional images they are familiar with. It seemed that tourists re-created images drawn from the popular imaginary, inserting themselves into familiar narratives of place. The goal of the research was to look specifically at the tourist gaze, that is, the way that tourists view destinations and then represent that vision in their images.