From 1886 to 1905, Beato’s photographic career in Burma provides content for an examination of his visual and contextual representations of the Southeast Asian country. Clearly aware of his audience, Beato showed a desire to cater to the Western consumers’ demand through both his imaging strategies and his business practices. His photographic depiction of Burma was closely tied to its intended purpose of consumption, commoditizing the Burmese image for the Western eyes as a series of pleasing, and ultimately collectable images with market values.
Despite the temporal distance, these early travel photographs share many similarities with the online archives of their equivalent in the digital age. Intended for export, the images are sought for …show more content…
Tourist destinations are widely promoted through photographic representations, as travelling is not only a physical experience, but also a visual one. Travellers are “consumers of places” , and photography is often their means to narrate the story of their journeys through capturing places, cultures and relationships with other people. In their statistical research, Pan, Lee and Tsai explore the relationships among the motivations of travellers, dimensions of tourism images and affective qualities of travel destinations. They analyzed 145 photos submitted to and published in “Why We Travel” in the Travel section of New York Times from 2008 to 2012, and found that travel photographs that are frequently associated with pleasant feelings of the viewer share a number of common visual qualities –– these photographs tend to feature natural resources, cultural events as well as art and historical objects, and are often taken in a long shot and at an eye-level angle. These qualities, which have altogether formed a standard stereotypes reflect a desire for a vicarious experience through photographic images, and at the same time reminiscent of Beato’s long shot photographs in a picturesque landscape fashion. As the photographer, Beato, and many working in the tourism photography industry today, are appropriators of the subject matters within the photo frames , putting themselves into a certain power hierarchy above the world that is being