Katy Blog Post #2

Katy Berggruen

Art History 407

17 November 2014

Blog Post No. 2

Orientalism and Tourism: Approaches when Encountering the Foreign

In his 1998 examination of “Race, Religion, and Empire: Holman Hunt in the Holy Land,” Tim Barringer dissects the way in which Pre-Raphaelite portrayals of the East work to reflect Western values and superiority by establishing these foreign people and environments as a distinctive “Other.”

 The concept of Orientalism has been a theme throughout the course of my academic studies. As an anthropology major, I became familiar with the viewpoints taken by researchers as being either emic (that is, experienced from within the cultural group) or etic (seen as an observer from the outside). The travel experience and encountering foreign cultures can be examined through both emic and etic lenses depending on the approach of the tourist. In my recent work in the photography archives of a library, I encountered many images that might be considered Orientalist in their content and portrayal of Middle Eastern and North African subjects. In particular, one collection of photographs from the late 1800s stands out in my mind. These photos portrayed a rather large Western tourist  in full formal suit standing in front of several recognizable Egyptian monuments. In one instance, he is being hauled up the side of one of the Great Pyramids of Giza by a group of Egyptian laborers in a sort of litter chair. Elements of imperial superiority point to the etic perspectives of Western tourists during this period of history.

An example of Victorian tourists visiting the Great Sphinx in Egypt

Source: http://obeliskseven.blogspot.com/2010/12/london-obelisk-cleopatras-ghosts.html

I drew a comparison between this and Barringer’s observation of a British figure in the background of Holman Hunt’s A Street Scene in Cairo: The Lantern Maker’s Courtship. In this painting, the British man is separated from the native population in both the way he is dressed (wearing a suit and black top hat) and the dominating role he plays as he threatens a local worker.  Although Holman Hunt went to the Middle East with intentions of depicting the Holy Land with Pre-Raphaelite naturalism, it is clear from this image, and many others painted from this period, that he incorporated his own ethnocentric worldviews in portraying Western superiority over the “Other.”

William Holman Hunt, The Lantern Maker's Courtship: A Street Scene in Cairo, 1854

Source: http://www.artmagick.com/pictures/picture.aspx?id=6121&name=the-lantern-makers-courtship-a-street-scene-in-cairo

Traveling to an unfamiliar land brings about the issue of cultural comparison. As seen in Holman Hunt’s experience as well as those of many Western tourists from around this period, the culture shock experienced when encountering a completely foreign atmosphere perhaps brought about a defensive, authoritative mindset. I think that this mindset of projecting one’s own values onto another happens often when operating in a foreign environment as a tourist. Even when people travel today, while many strive to incorporate the local customs of the foreign location in order to achieve the “authentic experience” and step away from the purely etic perspective on the world, the truth remains that our own cultural biases are hard to ignore completely.

Modern day tourists at Giza

Source: http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2011/09/12/egypt-sorting-out-the-tourists/

 Although these biases may not reach the same extremes as the expressions of Western superiority portrayed in the Orientalized images of Holman Hunt and other Victorian era travelers, it is difficult to avoid the way in which our background and cultural perspectives influence our touristic travel experiences.