Travel and Hyperreality

By Karen Sternheimer

Do you follow any “travel influencers” on social media or even aspire to be one? Even if you’re not sure what a travel influencer actually is, they are shaping peoples’ experiences of travel.

A travel influencer is someone who posts travel-related content (typically videos and/or images) to social media accounts, hoping to gain a large number of followers, often in exchange for sponsorship money and ad revenue. They might be given free perks or get paid to share videos of resorts or other travel destinations as part of a new form of tourism marketing.

If you consider yourself a savvy media consumer, you might feel immune to this kind of marketing. After all, someone’s breathless excitement about a hotel room or unique airbnb might seem like an obvious ad. Even if you wouldn’t choose a destination based on someone’s social media feed, influencers shape—and are shaped by—the notion of what it means to experience travel.

I thought of this at the beginning of a flight to London earlier this year, when a young woman sitting next to me on the plane unselfconsciously took duck-lipped, peace-sign flashing selfies for what seemed like a really long time before she conked out and slept for the remainder of the trip. Presumably these pictures are meant to be shared and say, “I’m on the plane about to take off to go to LONDON!!” giving an otherwise mundane moment before take-off on a long flight social meaning.

Throughout my travels, I noticed heightened moments of tourist selfie-taking or shamelessly posing as a companion takes countless pictures, mostly meant to highlight one’s most attractive angles rather than the famous location itself. The photoshoot isn’t done until the subject can review the photos and determine if they are acceptable, otherwise more photos are taken.

Just taking pictures of a location or of a plane wouldn’t convey the “I WAS THERE!!” message that presumably heightens the experience. French sociologist Jean Baudrillard referred to  hyperreality as something that seems more real due to the collapsing of boundaries between the media image and the “original.” Social media came decades after Baudrillard made this observation, but it seems to be a prime example of the blurred line between image and “reality.”

Baudrillard’s ideas exemplify a school of thought called postmodernism, According to this perspective, the rapid reproduction of images in our mediated age renders meanings unstable, with no original referent but instead a torrent of images to navigate.

Smart phones allow us to create our own torrent of images, and social media almost demands that we share them. I once had a student who told me that she found Instagram stressful and depressing, and when I suggested that she delete the app—or at least not use it as much—she said this would basically be like disappearing, and that her friends and family would worry about her if she didn’t continue to post regularly.

Before smart phones and digital cameras, images did not circulate nearly so frequently, especially our own. If you took pictures, you were limited to how much film you had and then had to wait until the film was developed and prints made, often at a local drug store or a drive-up place called Fotomat.

Travel is a ready-made opportunity to experience hyperreality. We might decide where to visit based on images, if not from travel influencers than from historical texts or even fictional texts like movies and television. Locations made famous on social or from traditional media draw tourists by the thousands; the beautiful town of Hallstatt, Austria, was apparently the inspiration for the Disney film Frozen and now draws about ten thousand tourists a day, making life difficult for the 700 locals whose town is overrun with tour buses.

Being a sociologist who has read Baudrillard does not render me immune to hyperreality. While in the Alsace region of France, I visited the towns that were supposed to have inspired the Disney film Beauty and the Beast. It’s been a long time since I saw the movie, first released in 1991, and while it was not the primary reason for visiting, it added to the allure.

As you can see from the photos below, it looks like a fairy tale, at least my imagination of what a quaint old French village would look like based on previous images. This image is “always already” there for more than just me, which is likely why it’s iconic status was cemented via stories about its inspiration for Beauty and the Beast. Baudrillard even wrote about Disneyland in his book Simulations, noting that its fantasy exists to provide the illusion that America itself is real.  

The image of this village brings tourists, as the photos detail, along with many souvenir shops, boulangeries (bakeries), and restaurants. We left just as several tour buses unloaded hundreds of people, ready to take their pictures and add to the already flowing torrent of images.

Shops and restaurants occupy buildings in a town that dates back to the sixth century, and vineyards in the distance frame the town.

And yes, inserting myself as part of the fairy tale scene was part of the pleasure of visiting. While I’m no travel influencer, nor did I feel like I had to take a picture at the spot where everyone else takes their selfies, my visit was shaped by my expectations of what these villages would be like, how I would experience them, and how tourist information guided me to these spots.

Thinking about fairy tales, rather than the region’s contentious history of being alternatively annexed by France and Germany over the last few centuries, makes for a more romantic view of this town, more likely to draw visitors and their selfies.

Photos courtesy of the author

Comments

[Lance A. Lewin]

Hello, Karen, the article is another popular subject that identifies how modern-day travelers record their adventures. Well, perhaps not all travelers need to register and then post images of "special" locations they visit.

"Points to Ponder"

As a fine art photographer Lobo was interested in how I interpreted what "Travel Influencers" images represent compared to images I record on trips around the world: from the interview in 2021 ...

"The imagery posted by travel influencers is focused more on identifying beautiful subjects which align with commercially oriented use and not so much as a thought provocative visual statement we relate to many types of fine art photography, instead, the Instagram Influencer is aware certain types of compositional design will enjoy a connection with their commercial partners, as well as families or solo traveler. The pictures we often enjoy from travel agencies and Instagram-influencers are relatable to so many dreams and fantasies about world travel. The Travel Influencer image is also a diary of sorts. Flash cards. Souvenirs, or otherwise, mementos. As such, from the perspective of the collector of fine art photography – I do not see the flood of Instagram-Influencer images having any impact or persuasion.

The genre of Travel Photography should not be contemplated in the context of Instagram or Travel Influencers work, though admittedly, they do act as influencers. Instead, for the most part, the fine art photographer spends a great amount of time constructing a composition - with or without people in the scene – in an attempt to offer viewers’ a sampling, as it were, of the location (or space) they are visiting from an artistic perspective. In this sense, the landscape photographer (or Travel Photographer) primary goal is to create a beautiful image – while for spectators’ – the work may also inspire travel to the locations depicted in the pictures".

(Note see philosopher Dr. Tea Lobo's essay SELFIE AND WORLD, On Instagrammable Places and Technologies for Capturing Them - Dr.Tea Lobo 2023)

Lance A. Lewin - Fine Art Photographer/Lecturer
IVSA North American-Canada Region Think Tank

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