this third eye extracted from the abdomen

‘I feel a very sincere admiration for all those people who march around Spain and Italy laden with bags, cases, telemeters, extra lenses, pose—meters, thermocolorimeters (“for taking the temperature of colour”) and who, never losing the smallest clasp from their bags, or the tiniest roll of film, advance with great strides into the ‘Leican era’. Through the absurdities of people’s behaviour, one can see the attitude to culture which is particularly expressed by a certain type of tourism: ‘What I particularly fear about the “small formats” is knowing that terrible state of slavery to which they condemn an infinite number of people who would really seem to deserve a better fate. When they arrive on holiday at a beauty spot or in front of a recommended campanile, travellers immediately think of their cameras. Rather than contemplating the landscape with their frontal eyes, these people rush to have it admired by this third eye extracted from the abdomen’.
Pierre Daninos in Pierre Bourdieu’s Photography a Middle-brow Art.

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