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American photographer Roger Minick also strives to expose the banality of "official" representations of tourist sites, but in his images of such sites in the United States he also depicts the casual connection with place that becomes possible when spectacle becomes wallpaper. His images depict interactions of locals with sites that are clearly geared to tourists, and reveal the subtle ironies contained within. Minick's photographs depict the oddity that is the spectacular and strange becoming commonplace. Like Yoon, Minick critiques the tourist's need to say I Was Here, marking either the place with their presence or their presence with the place. Minick shows that having borne witness to an iconic place, it is easier to turn one's back on it and pose for a snapshot than to truly participate in the place. Skimming surfaces of surfaces, some tourists will only become actors insofar as their roles have been predetermined by a guidebook. Thus, Minick shows how one-sided, overly simplistic, and misleading an institutional or "official" version can be.
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