On one of my last visits to the Moroccan seaside city of Essaouira, I was struck by the number of fashion shoots taking place in the streets of the medina. Women in full makeup and lavish clothes reclining against whitewashed walls as guys with DSLRs grabbed their shots.
This didn’t worry me so much until later in the evening when I asked a German tourist about his impressions of Morocco. “It’s not what I expected,” he said, “it’s quite dirty, there’s a lot of trash in the streets.” He paused… “It doesn’t look like it did on Instagram.”
It is, admittedly, rather dull and obvious to complain about the tourists when you live in a ‘destination’ city. When friends come to Marrakesh I try to accommodate the tourist traps they want to see and gently edge them away from scams. For this city, and Morocco in general, tourism is a sizable part of the economy. Therefore, places are prone to overdo it, and to a point I can be understanding.
There is a taxi stop where drivers will pick up tourists and overcharge them, then another stop slightly up the road where you can get a cab by the meter. The old town is full of people trying to hawk their wares, but you learn a brisk wave that fends them off without much effort. A little extra foot traffic and a few people oohing and ahhing are all par the course. Assimilable.
There is one thing, though, that I reserve the right to complain about–not only for its irritating, selfish impracticability, but for its part in a larger conspiracy that leaves all of us slightly less informed than we otherwise might be. The doorway portrait.
Morocco has famous doorways. The country’s melange of architecture styles leaves a beautiful, fascinating aesthetic throughout its streets. From small, crooked medina homes to the grand archways of palatial riads, there is a wealth of pictures to be taken of leaning against the doorframe, looking up as if admiring the handiwork, or maybe embracing a loved one in the center.
But doorways have a much more practical use for which they are often needed: passing through. Should you find yourself hoping to move from one room to another – or from the outside world to the inside – it’s very much an inconvenience when someone is standing there, posing.
Marrakesh’s Bahia Palace, with its huge, ornate rooms and magnificent, intricately carved ceilings, is one of the worst places for this tourism crime. Now, when I take visiting friends to see the sprawling courtyard and the small inner gardens, I walk, at a normal pace, through the photoshoots that occur around each corner. Because really, in this situation, who’s the obnoxious one?
As much as this is a personal gripe being taken out in the webpages of a travel magazine, it does have an effect that seeps further than where I want to walk. Morocco is a favorite backdrop for mini insta-shoots, likely for the sense of ‘exotic’ people might garner while still being able to get here with budget airlines from Europe. The effect, though, is to give an image of the country that is all aesthetic–Berber carpets and ornate tea glasses. It leaves out that this is still a developing economy. Poverty is very much on view anywhere you go. The reality doesn’t make it an any less of an enchanting place to visit, but leaving it out of view does change perceptions and lead to disappointment on arrival. These overdone Instagram photos can also cause overtourism to destinations that might not be able to handle it. And while tourism is generally good for economies, it can also perpetuate inequality–that thing Instagram photos are trying to hide.
Instagram wants us to show a better side to things. It’s these edited images that will gain us more likes and followers. We’re all likely guilty of having embellished a small, adequate corner of an otherwise less than pleasing establishment just for the Instagram likes. In doing so, we likely encouraged others to head to the same establishment, have the same disappointing experience, and further the cycle.
A recent episode of Why’d You Push That Button, the Verge’s podcast “examining the choices technology forces us to make,”documented the rise of brands creating Instagrammable spaces as a way of bypassing usual advertising routes. If you create a space that’s perfect for instagram and it features your brand, people will share it freely and willingly with their friends and followers.
It can lead to similar disappointments. The Brooklyn Garden Walkway in New York City was “VERY hyped via instagram”, according to Washington D.C. resident, Samantha Bastine, but when she arrived she found it “crowded, narrow, [with] no good views, inappropriately placed plants… everyone was taking selfies and it seemed v superficial all around.”
Asking people to refrain from taking overdone pictures for Instagram is likely a losing scheme. What is Instagram without the filters?
Instead, we have to learn a new way of reading these images – taking them as edited, somewhat false expectations, like one might do with conventional advertising. Though we can hope for otherwise, Instagram will probably always be a medium for subtle deceit. Just remember in the ever expanding search for the perfect gram–doorways are for walking through.
