We look to be verified rather than informed.

Photographs are memories and experiences made into objects. Whether on paper or on screen, held in hands or in our mind, photographs are powerful proof of experience and assumed truth. As information from around the world - both written and visual - become easily accessed and surplussed, photographs and words - all made by others - creates our first and sometimes only impression of the world, it's places, people, and it goings-on. Our personal convictions are now being cemented without any empirical evidence. Our own opinions and beliefs are predicating any first hand experiences. The information, ideas, art, and opinions we seek out, consume, and view are often done to verify our pre-existing notions. Even the places we travel to are often exercises in validating beliefs and expectations we have made before we even depart.

What we see explains who we are.

In an increasingly political and ideologically divisive country, our views of ourselves and of the world are defined by what we choose to see. As a tourist today, there are few places left in the world that can be found with our prior knowledge and without expectation. In my travels, I often battled my own cultural, political, and commercial influences as an American, and tried hard to see what was in front of me without trying to prove what I already expected to be there, without a filter, and without bias. Differences in reaction and perception to even these objective experiences still vary due the traveller's attitudes, awareness, and beliefs - all factors created beforehand. Photography is a visual reaction to reality. One's own photography is a clear and blatant statement on how one chooses to see, and in many ways, what they choose to believe.

Seeing is believing, but not understanding.

Toursim is fueled by the desire to experience. The industry has been a boon in recent years, and as more people travel, the more of a mark we leave, the more we leave behind, and ultimately, the harder is to leave our geographical, and mental sphere and find something new. Something without preconceptions, without influenced preface, and without previous explanation or belief. Photography is the manifestation of our experience; visual souvenirs. But experience does not always equate to understanding. Emotion will always trump logic. It is eaiser to feel validated than to learn you are wrong; that the world is bigger than second-hand information has led us to believe. Photography is a mirror to our own notitions about the world, and how we believe it to be.

All photography and design by Todd Roeth. Images made with a Canon 5D,with 20mm f/2.8. Images processed with Adobe Photoshop. Site designed with Adobe Flash and Panic's Coda. Hosted by Ideanode