The Art of Seeing: Travel, Photography,
and the Anthropology of Everyday Life
Deana is an anthropologist, documentary photographer, and writer with over a decade of experience studying human behavior across different contexts, from market research to cultural analysis. Her work explores the nuances of everyday life, focusing on how people move through spaces, interact, and create meaning in the seemingly ordinary. Having worked across academic and professional fields, she brings an anthropological lens to photography, using her camera not to capture spectacle, but to document the quiet, often overlooked moments that define a place. In this article, she examines the intersection of travel, photography, and anthropology, questioning what it truly means to see a place rather than simply look at it.
Beyond the Tourist Gaze
Travel is often seen as a way to experience something new - a break from routine, an opportunity to immerse oneself in a different culture, a chance to see the world. But seeing a place is not the same as merely looking at it. To see well requires more than just moving through a destination. It demands attention to detail, an awareness of the rhythms and interactions that shape daily life. It means noticing the way a place breathes - not through its landmarks, but in the gestures of its people, the way they navigate space, the rituals they enact without thinking. Both anthropology and photography share this preoccupation with observation. They ask: What can be learned by paying attention to the mundane? What do small, everyday moments reveal about a culture, a place, or a point in time?Approached this way, travel becomes something deeper than a series of destinations. It is not about accumulating experiences, but about shifting the way we see. Looking can be passive, detached, even selective. Seeing requires presence, patience, and an openness to complexity.
The Anthropology of Looking
Anthropology is the study of human experience - the ways people live, work, and interact. It is about understanding how meaning is created, how cultures take shape, and how the seemingly insignificant details of everyday life hold within them the larger structures of society. For over a decade, this has been the foundation of my work. As an anthropologist working in both academic research and professional practice, I have spent years studying the nuances of human behavior - whether in communities, workplaces, or consumer environments. Thisbackground has shaped the way I approach the world, making me more attuned to patterns that often go unnoticed. Photography, for me, is an extension of this practice. If anthropology seeks to understand culture through deep observation, then photography offers a way to document those observations - to translate them into visual form. The camera is not just a tool for capturing an image, but a way of asking a question: What is happening here? What is this moment telling me about this place? This way of seeing stands in contrast to the conventional approach to travel photography, which often prioritizes spectacle over substance, extra over the ordinary. The most widely shared images of a place tend to be the most expected - the postcard views, the dramatic landscapes, the shots that confirm what an audience already assumes about a destination. But a different kind of photography lingers in the in-between spaces. It focuses not on the obvious, but on the overlooked.
The Ethics of Seeing
Susan Sontag, in On Photography, famously argued that the act of taking a photograph is never neutral. A camera does not simply record reality - it frames it, selects it, gives it meaning. Every photograph is both an act of presence and an act of removal.
The photographer does not just capture a moment but intervenes in it, shaping what is seen and how it will be remembered. This raises important ethical questions: What is being captured, and what is being left out? Does this image reveal something true, or does it confirm an expectation? Am I witnessing, or am I imposing a narrative onto what I see? Ethnographers like Clifford Geertz have written about “thick description” - a way of writing about cultures that does not just describe what happens but seeks to understand the layers of meaning embedded within an action. A photograph can function in much the same way - not just as an image, but as a window into the social, historical, and emotional contexts that shape a moment. However, just as anthropology requires reflexivity - an awareness of one’s own position as an observer - photography demands a conscious engagement with what is being framed and why. If seeing is an ethical act, then it follows that what we choose to see - or fail to see - shapes our understanding of a place. The spectacle often overwhelms the everyday, and yet, it is in the everyday that culture is most vividly expressed.
The Poetry of the Everyday
What makes a place unique is not just its monuments or landscapes but its rhythms - the movements and interactions that unfold daily, unnoticed by those who live them. The way a group of friends instinctively gathers at the same bench each evening. The brief moment of stillness between a shopkeeper dusting off a display and greeting their first customer. The silent choreography of people navigating a crowded street without colliding.These patterns, repeated over time, form the texture of a place. And yet, they are often invisible to the traveler focused on capturing a city’s most obvious, photogenic aspects. Tim Ingold’s concept of “dwelling” reminds us that people do not simply exist in spaces - they inhabit them. They shape their environments just as much as they are shaped by them. To pay attention to these details is to understand a place not as a collection of sites, but as a dynamic, living thing. This is why the ethics of seeing matters - because to reduce a place to a single, dominant image is to erase the complexity of its everyday life. To photograph only what is immediately striking is to miss what truly makes a place distinct. Seeing well, then, is not just an aesthetic choice; it is a commitment to noticing what might otherwise go unrecognised.
Travel as a Way of Seeing
Travel has increasingly become a pursuit of curated experiences. Destinations areconsumed rather than explored, turned into a checklist of attractions rather than places to beengaged with. But if travel is reduced to a search for the spectacular, it misses the deeper stories unfolding in everyday moments. John Berger, in Ways of Seeing, reminds us that “the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” This is the heart of both anthropology and photography. A place is never just what it appears to be on the surface - it is layered, complex, and ever-changing. To approach travel anthropologically is to resist easy narratives. It is to remain open to contradiction, to let go of preconceptions, to recognize that no single image or experience can fully define a place.
Conclusion: Seeing as a Practice Both anthropology and photography teach the same lesson: that the most meaningful insights are often found in the details. But seeing well is not automatic. It is a skill - one that requires practice, effort, and an intentional shift away from the obvious; one that will never be fully perfected. To photograph well is not simply to document, but to engage - to ask questions rather than impose answers. To travel well is not just to visit new places, but to cultivate new ways of looking. And in a world that moves fast, that prioritizes spectacle over substance, learning to see is not just a skill. It is an act of resistance.