Martin Parr, Weymouth, 1999

George Eastman House presents a groundbreaking exhibition that explores the relationship between tourism and photography/motion pictures. Site Seeing: Photographic Excursions in Tourism, on view April 24 through Sept. 5, 2004, is a five-month exhibition that will feature 200 photographs and related artifacts drawn exclusively from the museum’s world-renowned collections of photography, motion pictures, technology, and library.

Site Seeing illustrates how photography and motion pictures came to define how we see and know the world. By focusing on tourism, the threads of history and culture intertwine in an illuminating and entertaining display of visual rarities and popular artifacts. More than any other visual media, photography and motion pictures encouraged the human desire to explore the world at large and its vibrant cultures, whether through actual travel or within the safe confines of home through publications, magazines, albums, and home movies.

Key Categories of Site Seeing:

Unidentified photographer, Sunbathers in Sunny Florida

I. Travel Forecast
The experience of travel imagery before the advent of photography and motion pictures, including etchings of cityscapes and magic lantern slides. Will conclude with the first examples of travel photography, Excursions Daguerreian (1841), and the first examples of “travel” motion pictures, Lumiere Brothers’ first publicly screened films of 1895, featuring a train arriving at a station and ocean waves crashing upon the shore (to be projected, as originally screened, on a white sheet).

II. A World Within Reach
Explores the impact of photography and motion pictures upon our experience of the world. The introduction of photographically illustrated books, albums, and tourist guides, as well as panoramas, help shaped the initial impulse of tourism in the mid-19th Century. Following the trade markets and newly established transportation routes, enterprising photographers roam the world capturing views of exotic lands and people for an insatiable tourist public. Illustrated magazines, like National Geographic, fill the consumer market with tales of distant lands and people. Simultaneously, photographic studios were established to sell travel photographs as souvenirs and mementos, to both the well-to-do traveler and the middle class which was now beginning to enjoy leisure activities. The introduction of the handheld camera and snapshot photography enabled tourists to create their own photographic or cinematic travel memories. Family albums, personal snapshots, and home movies capture the family on tour to places both rare and popular. On view alongside more than 150 photographs will be travel slide shows, home movies, cameras, and a tribute to films across the globe that inspired travel to particular destinations (such as Roman Holiday, Sound of Music, North by Northwest, and Field of Dreams).

III. And All I Got Was This Lousy . . .
A varied display of souvenirs that feature photography, collected as memory and confirmation of an experience, featuring key chains, t-shirts, stanhopes, photographs, and hundreds of postcards, plus an on-site photo booth for you to make your own memories.

IV. No Reason to Leave Home
Virtual travel, from the armchair to the computer. Within the confines of one’s own home and the comfort of an easy chair, the armchair traveler toured the world through a myriad of special 3-D effects, including the stereoscope and stereograph, View-Masters, with their accompanying reels. These optical wonders guided the armchair traveler in the popular belief that “you are there.” Today, this popular belief is sustained through the Internet that enables travelers to “virtually” tour the world from the comfort and safety of their homes.

Site Seeing will be complemented by programs in motion pictures and photography, including a film series in the Dryden Theatre throughout the run of the exhibition; photography lectures; and gallery screenings of 16mm home movies from the museum’s collection.

The exhibition is organized by George Eastman House, under project managers Sean Corcoran, assistant curator of photography, and Eliza Kozlowski, director of communications and visitor services. The exhibition will begin a national tour following its debut at George Eastman House. Venues to which Site Seeing will travel include The Chicago Cultural Center (Jan. 29 - April 3, 2005), Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Fla. (June 4 - Sept. 4, 2005), and Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio (Oct. 8, 2005 - Jan. 7, 2006).