So many photographs, so many representations: the tourist site is a replication machine it seems.  Within a minute, thousands of digital copies are being made.

Inherently, the photograph is a representation – a depiction of the world on a flat plane - two dimensional though accurate enough to satisfy our basest construction of reality.  When we look at a photograph, it allows us to at least imagine the possibility of ourselves witnessing what is being represented ourselves.  It is safe to say that what we see in the form of a photograph can usually be imagined to have taken place somewhere in the world at a given moment in time.

It is this type of photograph, the ‘believable’ photograph that is most effective in exposing our ignorance of the way that a camera represents.  None of these many photographs being taken could possibly be entirely true.  An educated viewer can and will often read a photograph without noticing its inherent flaws: it is simple to read a photograph incorrectly and out of context.  Some part of us wants to believe that we are seeing the ‘whole’ picture; that what we are looking at is all there was to see. 

With this in mind, a cleverly arranged and seamlessly constructed photograph can become a record of truth, if the viewer is unaware of the manipulation.  Seeing is believing; especially when we are given no reason to question what we see.