"disaster tourism"

I'm gonna guess that its an extension of the voyeurism associated with travel photography. It's part of vernacular photography and is at the same time very specific. The same is obviously true for historical sites such as Belsen, Auschwitz etc In a way the places that are visited are culturally specific the photographs made on these visits are analogous with owning something emotively - guilt, remorse, horror, a sense of identity/ history.

The photographs that are made on theses trips are often interesting in that the usual compunction in vernacular photography is to pose a companion/ family member left or right of the subject, you've know doubt seen this done a thousand times and like me have probably participated in this act too. The purpose in this type of formality seems at first blush innocent; contextual, evidential or corroborative. Though thinking about vernacular images that I've seen made in circumstances such as the 1st Iraq war, and how these operate next to say the works of the artist Thomas Hirschhorn, the photographer Simon Norfolk and laterally to the works of Sophie Ristelheuber - always leaves me slightly perturbed. Each operates as its own narrative thread (each its own ontology), all exist within the canon of war photography but the negotiation between the vernacular stuff, the art based stuff and the photo -journalism stuff is problematic. Authorial direction is what seems immediately absent from the vernacular photography produced in this context.

Herein is the platform for tourism which comes loaded with the baggage (excuse the pun) of colonial photography. And lest we forget Roger Fenton's work in the Crimea and the works of Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner in the American Civil War. and the likelihood that a good deal of the work they made then was of suspect honesty. This macabre interest has always existed in photography. From Picture Post to coffee table tomes such as Joel Meyerowitz's - AFTERMATH. Devastation, death and disaster sell. I'm sure a clever editor may already be collating images for a book examining the yards of vernacular imagery created by the 'disaster tourist'.