Gazes and faces in tourist photography

The article illuminates one of the central ethical questions concerning tourist photography: the ways in which tourists photograph local people in tourist destinations. In line with the previous research on tourist photography, the study suggests that tourists’ experiences of responsible behaviour become continuously re-defined and negotiated in relations with others. Through a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis of tourists’ accounts, the study focusses on the role of the face in photography; that is, how encountering the face of the other interrupts the photographer and calls for heightened responsibility and reflection. Drawing on the Levinasian idea of ethics as being-for-the-other, the article visualizes relational ethics that do not originate from the tourist’s gaze, but from the face of the other.