How is the Orientalist Gaze Perpetuated Through Instagram Today?

As a half-Filipino, half-white artist I have always been enticed by how our Western perceptions of the Global South have been formed and why. A large factor is Orientalist paintings and writings of the 19th century. Although, we do not read or look at Orientalist paintings/writings anymore, we consume most of our visuals online and mostly through social media, more specifically through Instagram. In this paper, I question how the Orientalist gaze continues to be perpetuated through Instagram today. I answer this through analyzing the function of travel photographs and photographers, and how travel instagrammers continue to create false realities of  the global South in order to benefit themselves and their viewers.

Orientalism according to Edward Said, a cultural critic who devoted himself to defining and exposing Orientalism in the Western world, “is a style of thought that separates the East and the West”. ‘The Orient’ as a concept is a European invention. Europeans would travel to ‘the Orient’ which was mostly the Middle East beginning in the 15th century and would bring back their curated findings. I use the term ‘curated’ because they would pick and choose what information they wanted to share to the West. They would describe the East as a fantastical, romantic, mythical place filled with exotic beings, haunting memories and surreal landscapes. ‘The Orient’ became almost a fictional place, a place where people did not have jobs and just sat around all day listening to music and charming snakes as depicted by Jean Leon Gerome in his painting The Snake Charmer (1880).  Many of these paintings depicting the Middle East are very similar in setting, they portray people in a fantasy space without any history, context, or modernity. There are no women, and if there were, they would be naked. There are no Westerners or sign of industry and work either. We see this in Death of Sardanapalus by Delacroix, The Slave Market by Jean Gerome, and The Arab Tale Teller by Horace Vernet. Orientalist paintings and writings allowed for a space where Westerners’ “sadistic and erotic desires could be projected without any consequences and their fantasies could be satisfied”.

Orientalist works were also used to clearly define the difference between the East and the West. They were purposely dramatized in order to remind Westerners of their higher culture and civilization, to evoke a sense of superiority and power. As Said writes, “Orientalism is used to define the West as a contrast”. The purpose of Orientalism is to prove that the East is a place filled with “inferior, primitive, child-like, feminine people” who are incapable of taking care of themselves and “need paternal rule of the West”. This is the Orientalist mindset, one that sees the non-West through this lens of cultural superiority. Orientalism is used as a tool to continue to suppress and oppress the East without guilt, because they supposedly desperately need the West to come save them from their own incapability of taking care of themselves. Said writes, “the Orient is and was not a free subject of thought”. Orientalism is a “corporate institution” for handling the non-West, it dictates how we describe, view, teach, settle, and rule ‘The Orient’. It is a Western style of dominating, re-defining, and restructuring the non-West, hence having authority, and claiming the reality of ‘The Orient’. 

In the 19th century, the Orientalist gaze and mindset was mostly spread to the West through the Orientalist paintings and writings of the few who decided to travel to the Middle East and bring their findings back. Once the camera was invented, actual pictures of the Global South were easily accessible to anyone in the West if they wanted and travel became a lot more common, meaning a lot more people were bringing their own findings and photos home. Pictures are not fictional paintings, and supposedly captures of reality. Photos can be trusted to depict true physical existence and real culture, that is why people trust photos and take them as truth.  The photograph is taken due to plain attraction, to document, or to surveil a certain someone or something. When the camera was invented in the 19th century, the photograph was mostly first used to document prisoners, patients, and different ethnicities (aka non-white). So basically anyone who did not have a photo of themselves was ‘morally correct’, having a photo of oneself had a negative connotation. The viewer of the photograph already understood that they were the good guys, the ones that had done no wrong. By looking at a photograph, we already have an unconscious lens that puts us on a patronizing moral high ground. Basically there was a connotation of the corrupt in photos, that those looking at the photos were the non-corrupt. This was the power photographs had and once National Geographic was founded in 1888, they became an institutional power in The Western world.

The National Geographic is a high brow, scholarly, intellectual journal, it is trusted by many. It has been responsible for creating many representations of the non-west in the West. This magazine produced thousands of curated images of the global South: beautiful , fascinating photos of people living their daily lives. A lot of the times it would be photos of people in poverty, suffering, but photographed in an appealing, aesthetically pleasing way. It was easy for the Western world to consume and enjoy without wanting to put the magazine down or feeling any guilt. Just like Orientalist paintings, photographers would depict people and cultures as primitive, child-like, incapable of taking care of themselves and needing saving, that their way of life isn’t the right one. Also promoting the idea of the White savior complex, where White people believe that people of the non-West need saving and they are the people who are entitled to do so. This was in a sense, a modern version of Orientalism, this is how Orientalism continued to thrive in the 20th and 21st centuries under the radar and without any hesitation or questioning. The Afghan girl is a widely known National Geographic image, she was on the cover of  National Geographic from 1985, no one knew her name or who she was and her photo went was spread everywhere. People were shocked and enticed by her green eyes and overall look, the Western world was basically just shocked that brown people could have light eyes and could be considered stereotypically ‘pretty’ in the West. The Afghan girl was exotified and fetishized by the Western audience, and what makes it unsettling was that she was just a child. This is just one of the many examples of how National Geographic shaped the way the Western world perceived the East and controlled how the global North saw, thought, and understood the cultures and people of the global South. Nowadays people do not tend to consume travel photography through the National Geographic but online. Today people consume travel photos (and most photos in general), through Instagram. Unlike National Geographic, Instagram influencers don’t have an institution controlling what they post, they have the liberty to post whatever they want, however they want. This creates a dangerous space for travel influencers to post photos without consequence or backlash from an institution that at least has an editor to fix their mistakes. 

Instagram has become the quickest, easiest, and most common way to consume photography. We can subscribe to whoever and whatever we want to see, and we are able to have a perfectly curated personal feed that we know will satisfy us everytime we go on it. It first started out as a social platform to catch up on the lives of your friends and family but now we use it to follow pages that appeal to us aesthetically and as a form of entertainment. It has also become a platform for brands to sell things through influencers and ads. One of the more popular genres of pages to follow are travel instagram pages, usually posting high quality, curated, edited professional photos of scenes around the world. Travel instagrammers/influencers are people who travel the world, take photos of themselves travelling and post them as their job. It sounds like a dream job for many: they get to stay in a lot of luxury hotels, fly first class, have access to an unlimited amount of experiences, and gourmet food all paid for or discounted through brand deals. They themselves live a life far from reality (these are the influencers who have enough followers to sustain their lifestyle, usually 40k and up or at least a 3.5% engagement rate).  Hotels and establishments will give influencers brand deals because of the power influencers have over their audience, the perfect influencer will have enough engagement where their followers start putting the places they blog on their own travel bucket lists. Brands know how influencers can inspire their followers to travel to certain places through creating a fantasy paradise through their photos. If you look at the most popular travel influencer feeds, it will be mostly blue water and orange desert sands that are oversaturated with harsh filters. Everyone is travelling to the same places, warm tropical countries, mostly in the ‘exotic’ global South. Travel instagrammers have found their niche, they know what their audiences want, they want photos that are distinctly different to their own lives, they want to be taken out of reality, just like Orientalist paintings. 

In Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain by Mark Reinhardt, Holly Edwards, and Erina Duganne, the authors discuss the concepts of beautiful suffering and impoverishing experience in photography. Beautiful suffering is a concept where someone else's strife and pain is documented in an aesthetically pleasing way. Their alluringly curated images of suffering becomes a source of pleasure for the viewer rather than a sense of urgency or guilt. We see this a lot in travel photography, the photos are curated, cropped, and manipulated by the photographer and editor to make the photo easily consumable. No one wants to look at people struggling and hungry, unless they are beautiful and wearing colorful traditional clothing that matches the shades of the flowers in the background. A lot of travel photography tends to fetishize poverty and struggle, beauty is more important to the photographer and viewer than the documentation of true existence. Few want to see real strife and devastation or else it is going to put a damper on their mood and they may have to actually try to care. This kind of photo reminds they Western viewer that they are not in this situation, that they are seeing this from their cozy home, seeing these photos actually makes them feel grateful for how different they are from the photo subject. It emphasizes the distinct difference between their reality and the depiction of those suffering in the photos which tends to alter the viewers mindset, that Western culture is indeed superior and does not contain any suffering which also boosts their moral superiority. Susan Sontag wrote on how photos like these “limit experience to the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, souvenir”. By this Sontag means that the experience of reality becomes impoverished. The photo is taken as a fantasy, and if noted otherwise, assumed to be seen through the white male point of view. The photo is cropped and edited to display a scene none of us actually know is real but we accept as truth. We are alienated and take on the role of the voyeur, we observe a passive scene where we cannot experience smell, sound, touch, and sight out of the photo, impoverishing experience. Voyeuristic viewpoints promote distance between the viewer and the photo subject. Usually documentation of ruin and struggle should provide a privilege check, but instead beautiful suffering makes the viewer feel better about themselves and their culture, and affirms to them that they are on a platform where they can dictate what the global South should do to deal with their strife since supposedly it does not exist in the Western world.

In Reading National Geographic by Catherine Lutz and Jane Lou Collins, the authors go through the five different types of gazes that form the overall Orientalist gaze that is used in taking and viewing travel photos. The dissection of the Orientalist gaze is important to understand how powerful photography can be in perpetuating it. First, there is the viewers gaze. We need to understand that the viewers gaze is different depending if the person has historically been allowed to openly look. It will be different if the viewer is a white straight cis male, compared to someone who is none of that (the photo is always assumed to be taken from the white male POV unless noted otherwise). Also, the viewer does not enter a freely chosen spot, it is forced upon them. The photo is in the power of the photographer and the institution that composes the photos. The viewer uses their own knowledge to make connections in the photo. What they imagine about the world before seeing the photo and what they remember afterwards forms their perception of the photo content. Presumed consent of the photo subject makes viewers think they have a relationship with the ‘other’. The viewer comes from a space where they think they are consuming “high-brow” content, it is not about celebrities or gossip but about worldly culture, putting them on a moral high ground. Secondly, there is the photographer's gaze. The photographer has the potential to control the photo subject matter, composition, POV, sharpness, depth, focus, color, framing, style, etc. They hold a powerful device in their hands. As I said before, usually the photo is taken because of the distinction between the content in the photo and their Western culture. They put the camera lens between them and whatever they feel alienated by to relieve discomfort and insecurity of not being able to control what is in front of them, in this case, the Global South. Next, there is the photo subject’s gaze. Is the subject looking at us or not? Is there a Westerner with them? What setting are they placed in? Their gaze gives people “an imaginary possession of the past thats unreal, and take possession of a space they are insecure about”. Then there is the institutional gaze. So in this case it would be National Geographic, Instagram or the photo manipulators. Through editing and curating, the institution is able to manipulating our gaze of the photo of the other unconsciously. They are the ones who create a cropped experience for us. They get to control the body in the photo but also our knowledge of the body. They can force, along with the photographer, the body to emit signs or conform to ideas the institution wants to emit. They also choose a portion of photos that were taken to emphasize what they want. Also, when it comes to Instagram, we need to question whether the photo is being commissioned by someone. Is it a brand deal? Who edits and selects the photos? The instagrammer is always in the photo and not taking it, so they are in control of the layout?  This means editing out the “irrelevant” things and arranging it with other photos in their feed to alter its meaning and emanate the ideas of the global South they want us to absorb.Lastly, there is the gaze of the Westerner and non-Westerner.  The photo of the non-Western (by the Western photographer) is taken due to the foreignness/difference of the self. The Westerner is put in an uncomfortable position, recognizing themselves in the photo of the non-Western other and denying that recognition. Photos of the other help relieve anxiety to remind them how different they are. The non- western is notable but different, the photos are taken of the global south to remind the Westerner they are more modern and civilized. The non-Westerner will notice a dramatization of intercultural relations as the Westerner sees it as the Westerner coming in and supposedly saving or helping the non-Westerner. The non-Westerner will see a lot of patronizing smiles unreturned by the photo subject and colonial looks, the Westerner sees that as creating cultural bonds and accepting other cultures. In photos of the Western and non-Western together, the Westerner is not there to make a connection with the non-western they just stand there and smile as they are satisfied looking at the ‘ethic other’ for fun. The people in the image become souvenirs, two dimensional objects to take home and for Westerners to show to their friends and family as they laugh at their ‘unique differences’.

These five different gazes are important to the colonial regime, they keep the Orientalist mindset alive and thriving. Through understanding these gazes we can dissect and analyze travel photos ourselves to understand how they also further perpetuate the Orientalist gaze today. Once we understand the gazes, we understand the power that travel photographers and bloggers have when posting photos of ‘the other’. Through one photo, travel influencers can completely shape the views of the Western viewer on the non-Western photo subject to their engaged and absorbent audience.

The images I have pulled from Instagram I’ve chosen to write about, are all from influencers that have a following ranging from 856 thousand to 4.1 million, all highly influential people with an enormous following. I want to analyze those who have the highest impact on their followers and are from the Western world. 

The most famous out of all of them is @muradosmann, with a following of 4.1 million people. What’s interesting about his account is that he is in none of his photos, he is famous for images of his wife in different settings holding his hand with her back facing towards the camera, her face is almost never shown either. In each photo, she wears the ‘traditional’ clothing of whatever culture she seems to be in. Since none of them show their faces in their photos, you can tell they heavily rely on the background and his girlfriends body to fill up the space. For example, In this photo his wife is wearing an earth toned dress to match the scenery, and in the back stands an Ethiopian priest. In this photo, they use a high authority local figure and degrade him into a photo prop. His gaze seems unwilling, and we are granted full access to him through a direct gaze. The priests gaze is looking into the camera, but we do not see the gaze of the woman. We are given full access to the farmer but not the woman, we are able to create our own assumptions about the farmer but are blocked off from the Western woman. Throughout these photos, that is a pattern we will notice, usually we are given full access to the non-Western photo subject and not to the Western photo subject.  In this next photo, @muradosmann takes a photo of his wife standing in front of a lake in Yangshuo, China. She is wearing a robe with vague motifs related to some kinds of Asian patterns, we definitely know that this robe is not made for function and was probably sold as decor to tourists in a souvenir shop. The fisherman in the background looks and smiles directly into the camera as he holds two cormorans on his shoulders. This image is very reminiscent of old Orientalist paintings where they would depict the ethnic other interacting with ‘exotic animals’ as if they were one themself. There is no labor shown, but an image of ‘the other’ playing with animals all day. The photo is also highly saturated and edited to seem like fantasy paradise, even though the photograph is supposed to capture the truth, instead this impoverishes experiences and creates a false fetishized reality. In this photo, also by @muradosmann, his wife is pictured in Ethiopia wearing a luxury zebra print dress, I guess in references to the ‘exotic’ African animal, standing at the edge of a small body of water holding a water jug. In the background, dozens of locals stare at her confused and some annoyed as she poses for the photo. She is obviously using the water jug as a prop, those is no sign of intention to actually collect water, did she ask someone to borrow their jug for the photo? This photo is the perfect example of “beautiful suffering”. They edited the photo to be more vibrant, and she specifically wore a dress to match the setting, there is no purpose to help or educate, the purpose was to document suffering in an easily consumable and aesthetically pleasing way for the Western audience. Also, in the caption of the photo, @muradosmann assures his audience that even if the water looks clear, it is indeed filled with “animal waste, worms, and diseases”, he doesn’t want his audience to forget that they are posting a photo of poverty stricken Africa, the only kind of Africa they display in any of their photos. When posting in places that have poverty, it is all they seem to focus on. They romanticise the daily collection of water, there is a sense of White savior complex, like they are doing the community a huge favor by showing up for one day and posting a photo that fetishizes their lack of access to clean water. 

Next there is @gypsea_lust, a username problematic in itself, who has 2.1 million followers. She posts mostly photos of herself in different curated settings as she travels. Just like every other travel influencer she filters her photos to have harsh blues and oranges (filters you can actually buy online to use yourself). In this photo, she stands in a carpet store in Cappadocia, Turkey. She captions it “In the land of magic carpets” along with an emoji of a crystal ball and a genie, which eludes to a fantastical mythical land. Which are tropes that have been assigned to pretty much any Middle Eastern country because of Orientalism. Again, by doing this, the influencer takes a space, mystifies it and creates their own false reality for their audience to claim. In the second @gypsea_lust photo, she poses alongside two women from Cartagena, Columbia. This photo is clearly a curated scene, she poses with them as if she is modelling, it is ingenuine, she is not trying to document their culture , she is using them as props as many influencers use ‘the ethnic other’ for. By posing the Western with the non-Western it also allows a space for the direct comparison and critique by the viewer, @gypsea_lust shot this photo to show how distinctly different they are rather than humanize them, this is the process of othering a culture.

Another extremely popular travel influencer is @doyoutravel who has 2.7 million followers. When researching travel bloggers, he came up on almost every website as a recommendation. I am going to specifically analyze a couple of photos he posted from his trip to India as they portrayed the Orientalist gaze very clearly, but most of his photos in the global South follow the same patterns. In this photo @doyoutravel sits next to an aghori, a sadhu/monk that engages in post-mortem rituals. He captions the photo “finding myself in India” with a laughing emoji, and then goes on to describe Varanasi as “raw” and “fascinating”. White people tend to use the global Southern countries to find themselves. They go there to use it like it's there for them to discover, they colonize new experiences. Also, by describing a country as “raw” and “unreal” further exotifies and fetishizes it, it is something unfathomable to the Western world. Again another influencer is using a person of color as a prop to look cultured as well as appropriates and simplifies their religion for an Instagram photo. The Western is not there to make a connection with the non-Western, they just stand there and smile as they are satisfied looking at the ‘ethnic other’ for fun. In this other photo @doyoutravel posted in Varanasi, he poses alongside a local man on a boat. The caption is “just a couple of homies cruisin’ through the Ganges”, we know that they are not in fact “homies”, this caption is to point out how funny he thinks it is that he has been put in a situation with someone so ‘different’, it is so him and his audience can laugh together at the ‘ethnic other’. Another pattern I noticed on his trip to India was that any photo he posted of the ‘ethnic other’ were either half-dressed or naked. This is a pattern seen in Orientalist paintings as well, the non-western is usually depicted naked not only to further exotify but also for the Western to apply their sadistic desires upon without guilt, the non-Westerns body is not for themselves but for the Western to consume. There is never a sign of modernity or industry, just scenes to remind the Westerner they are indeed from a civilized and legitimate culture.

Lastly, there is the Instagrammer @aggie who has 858 thousand followers. When trying to look for travel Instagrammers that were posting responsibly without ignorance she was one of the suggestions, she is supposed to be a feminist and conscientious blogger. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any travel influencer that seems to be doing things properly and @aggie seems to be one of the worst influencers out there due to the fact that people are looking to her for a less ignorant kind of travel photography. I have an assortment of her photos to look at that overall promate the Orientalist gaze. In the first couple of photos, @aggie is in Rio Negro, in the Brazilian Amazon. In both photos she wears some kind of cultural garment as well as has markings painted on her face. In the first photo she sits in a tourist shop with two women, one looking away and one looking into the camera with a face of dissatisfaction. You can tell aggie just went to a tourist shop, and threw this outfit on to take photos with these women. The gazes of the women tell us they are used to being used for photos, this is a common occurrence. In the caption for this photo, @aggie ties to start a conversation about “cultural appropriation vs cultural appreciation” and then goes on about how she was nervous to post this photo because people may call her out for disrespecting a culture. She says “what’s a better way than by sharing a meal together, sharing clothes/closet, than sharing their story to the world?”. Many travel influencers feel entitled to the stories and representations of the ‘ethic other’, they feel as they have ownership to these people's lives and that it is their responsibility to share them with the world, did they want/ask them to share in the first place? How do any of these photos share the locals story at all? This is not sharing, this is stealing and appropriating an entire culture and simplifying it to one image. In this photo, she compares her skin tone with the skin of a local man. Through this one action,  the fetishization of skin tone, @aggie is further reducing these people to a Western idea of people in the global South as primitive, simple minded, and incapable. 

In this set of photos @aggie is in Uganda, on a charity trip like any other White influencer. She carries a water jug just like the @muradosmann photo and looks down at a group of Ugandan children. The look is familiar, a patronizing colonial gaze from one who thinks they are some sort of Western savior doing these poverty stricken children a grand favor by filling up one jug of water and leaving. In the second photo, she poses with an elderly woman, you can see other people in background, none look into the camera and Aggie smiles off into the distance. Her outfit is very reminiscent of uniforms English colonists wore when ‘discovering’ new countries, a large brim hat and a lot of neutral earth tones. There is a clear distinction of roles in this photo, @aggie is there to discover, take, and use, the non-Western is there to be used, entertain, and satisfy the Westerner. She also captions the photo “some girls want diamond rings, some girls dream about getting to the most remote jungles in the world to meet other tribes & cultures like Pygmies! (plus the diamond rings haha!)”. She is obviously ignorant to the corruption and abuse in the Ugandan mining industry if she is mentioning wanting diamond rings in her caption, showing us she does not know much about Uganda and how the country works (probably she knows that she has the privilege to simply show up and leave whenever she wants to go back home). She also writes “I always thought it was funny that the western cultures have been trying so hard to impose their way of living to people around the world yet they themselves are often not happy in it,” which is a valid point, but unfortunately she does not realize that through her photography she is in fact aiding the colonial regime by perpetuating the orientalist gaze in order to suppress/oppress the people of the global South. The purpose of these photos is to emphasize how distinctly different the Western is to the non-Western, it is to further stigmatize a false reality, the way the West sees ‘The Orient’ through its gaze. Lastly, here’s a picture of @aggie posing with a food stall man in Delhi, india. Once again, she uses someone as a photo prop, and curates a false reality around them. She captions the photo “ I can’t help but to think about the security guard working there - What’s his story? Is he close with his kids? What does he dream about? Does he like his job?”. Instead of actually talking to him, she creates a fetishized fantasy on his life, she projects that his life is so mysterious and mythical something that her Western audience wouldn’t understand. She also says “ I look into the locals eyes and they can see I care about them.”, she’s taking ownership of their thoughts and portraying a scenario where she’s some kind of savior by showing up in their country and just staring at them. These people's lives become mythical stories for Western entertainment, stories of a false land where people have no jobs, they have no modernity, they live amongst animals and wear no clothing. 

 Through the fetishization, exotification and demonization of the non-western, along with impoverishment of experience, and documentation of beautiful suffering through a multitude of gazes depicted in the photography on popular travel Instagrams, the Orientalist gaze is very much alive and thriving. The ‘ethnic other’ is depicted as primitive, simple, and unmotivated through patronizing and toxic gazes in order to keep the global South oppressed. It is either fetishization or  amplification of suffering or completely creating false reality of a Western paradise where the ‘ethnic other’ doesn't have a job and just hangs out with animals by the river all day. Travel influencers are curating representations of the ‘ethnic other’ to satisfy the need of the Westerner, that the Westerner does indeed come from a legitimate culture that is more civilized. In the end, the influencer is still the star of the show and not the people or cultures they visit. The influencer colonizes new experiences and ends up feeding fantasies and myths to their millions of followers, they perpetuate the orientalist gaze and benefit from it.

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