No photos, please!
Plus, everybody is waiting on BILT, piercing the Delta cult, and battery-powered skis
Quick note before we dive in. For National Geographic (my day job), I interviewed the author and photographer behind my favorite coffee table book last year, The London Club: Architecture, Interiors, Art.
“If I don’t post about it, did it really happen?”
It’s a bit of self-mocking occasionally trotted out when somebody shrugs and does something cringe like pose pensively before a painting in a museum.
The ways in which photography and our compulsion to share it have warped our travel experience has been on my mind the past couple weeks because one of the most spectacular things I did over the holidays—Kartchner Caverns State Park—was also something that didn’t allow photos.
For the unfamiliar, the caverns are a series of otherworldly underground caves filled with stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, draperies, pools, and more. All right out of a sci-fi movie set. Thanks to herculean efforts by the Arizona State Parks to preserve it, it’s also still “alive”—i.e. growing. For a couple of hours, my family and I carefully traipsed along its damp paths. Detached from our phones and with an engaging guide, we were all remarkably “present.” (God, I hate that word almost as much as “authentic.”)
Perhaps more importantly, the whole tour was, simply, pleasant. How much in travel today can lay claim to that once-unambitious word?
Many of the sites etched indelibly on my mind didn’t allow photography when I visited them. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to imprint an image in my brain as hard as I did while gazing at Giuseppe Sanmartino’s Veiled Christ in the Cappella Sansevero in Naples. And memories of the ceilings of Santa María Tonantzintla in Cholula still leave me floored. It remains the most overwhelming church interior I’ve ever laid eyes on. (The prohibition on photography in the meh Lee Bul exhibition at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, however, couldn’t have affected me less.)
The banning of photography used to be more widespread, especially in sensitive places (like church interiors in Mexico or the Green Room vaults in Dresden), places that needed to move visitors through quickly (Neuschwanstein), or in countries where cultural institutions had bizarre applications of image rights. Many places tossed those proscriptions, either because they realized how silly their legalese sounded, they wanted the organic social media attention, or enforcing it just became impossible.
Today, the places that ban it are making a conscious choice and are usually well-funded private art foundations like the Menill in Houston or Glenstone outside D.C. But I think the people running popular attractions need to quickly take a page out of members’ clubs and start enacting photography bans.
We’ve all sort of stumbled together into this new reality where every art museum has some version of a scene where people are waiting to take turns of a painting and never actually looking at it. So muddled has it all become that I can’t tell if we’re taking photos because we think we’re taking cool ones, to show we were there, or what.
Consider, for instance, the Sistine Chapel. Anything you’re going to take on your phone already exists with a quick Google, and is of higher quality. I guess it’s not yours, but is does that outweigh the plaintive cries of “No photos, please!?”
Or, worse, that in the last 15 years, hundreds of people have died trying to take selfies—on the edge of the trail in the Grand Canyon, with wild animals, or swept away by waves on a beach.
So before we all photograph ourselves into an early death, maybe before we whip out our phone we can ask what the purpose really is for taking a photo. And then reconsider taking one.
Second little note. Todd Plummer is one of the more fun and talented writers in the lifestyle arena, and used to write for me at The Daily Beast. He’s launched a weekly newsletter called Plumm that I can guarantee will be a must-read.
DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES
The biggest news this week will be whatever BILT announces on Wednesday. The uber-popular credit card has broken up with Wells Fargo and will reveal its new era on the 14th For months, the rumors have run rampant as to what exactly the three new cards will entail—especially their first premium card. One expectation is that you’ll be able to finally pay your mortgage using the card. I can’t imagine the perks will be anything but dramatic given how essential making a splash in a very competitive space is, but let’s see…
Any time I’ve dipped my toe into the world of hotel rewards, I’ve found it befuddling how people spend so much time (and money) trying to “win” in this arena when the gains always seemed so paltry and varied. So I read One Mile at a Time’s story about a Marriott hotel manager divulging that they can’t stand elite members and don’t care about delivering any of the promised benefits. Good rewards programs are simple, and consistent in the benefits they deliver. And hotel reward programs (with the possible exception of Hyatt) have never convinced me on those fronts.
View from the Wings has a great story laying out just how much Delta and Marriott in particular have gotten customers to associate lesser benefits as perks. It’s a must-read for anybody still deep in the Delta cult. While many are still blindly loyal, the shift away from branded loyalty is accelerating. More and more travelers are converting or focusing on non-branded credit card rewards (BILT, Chase, Amex, etc) as meaningful savings are easier to find there.
Something a little gross about this Independent story: “Venezuela: when will its wonders be open to travellers once again?”
Every story about Las Vegas’s troubles features some exec acknowledging one of the main issues—value. That goes for the latest pieces about the city’s abysmal December in which the airport saw a shocking 10 percent drop in passengers for the month (its busiest) from last year! And yet there are never really any solutions offered, almost as if nobody has any ideas for what to do with travel if your business is not solely focused on the rich and/or charging everybody else more and more for less and less.
Lol at the Daily Mail making up a term “luggage lounger” in an effort to squeeze every last click out of our collective anger and anxiety around the misery of travel. The media outlet conjured this term to write a piece arguing that the new thing everybody is “seething” about is people who wait in front of the conveyor belt for their bag to come, making it harder for you to get to yours if it pops out. I almost never check a bag, but this seems like it could be resolved by a polite, “Excuse me.”
STORIES I LOVED OR WISH I DID
Really enjoyed this obituary of Jay Stein, the man who turned a studio tour of Universal into its theme park empire.
A writer tried out Apple’s new live translation technology on a trip to Japan for the New York Times. It’s exactly the kind of “service journalism” that is, in fact, a service. I haven’t done it yet, but travel a lot to countries where learning the language before is unrealistic. And the writer answered a lot of my questions, from how good it is (great for one-on-one interactions and classes, bad for crowded places and fast speakers) and what kind of awkwardness to expect.
Excellent image selection in this Washington Post story A Silk Road moonscape, with no Americans in sight about the Mangystau region in Kazakhstan.
The FT’s test of the world’s first battery-powered skis.
Apparently the Louvre is at serious risk of being flooded…
TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS
TSA intends to expand the PreCheck Touchless ID program to 65 airports by the end of the spring
Avelo Airlines ends ICE deportation flights
Chable Hotels is expanding into luxury branded residences
Air Premia (a relatively new South Korean airline) just is launching flights to DC
Air France adds La Premiere to Atlanta, Boston, Houston and Tel Aviv
Spanish woman who found fame for botching fresco restoration dies
Completely agree about reward programs… I am in recovery from the Delta Cult… even as a platinum medallion I didn’t get a lot (maybe one upgrade all year) & spent so much just to fly Delta. Trying my luck with other airlines now (and saving a lot of money).
I share your feelings about the phone photos of well trodden sights. Just enjoy the place, look in awe. No need for photos that someone with a better camera already took and put online.
At least photography is not dead, as the common saying goes, but yea, just a lot of unnecessary shite. Photos for the sake of taking photos, because it’s free I guess.