Simon Roberts' photos of Switzerland look like scenes from a fairytale. Snow blankets towering mountains, fog fills valleys, and pines ring glittering lakes. Look closer and you'll see a steady throng of tourists admiring it all---phones aloft for the perfect pic.
Roberts documented 30 of the most photographed locations in Switzerland for the series Sight Sacralization. The images feature breathtaking scenes and a bunch of people Instagramming instead of gazing at them. “There’s this sense that the landscape is secondary to what they’re there for, which is identifying themselves in a particular place,” he says.
It didn't always look this way. In 1863, mass-tourism pioneer Thomas Cook commandeered the first group of British tourists through the Swiss Alps, hiking for hours up steep mountainsides with ropes under threat of avalanches. But it was worth it. "It was then that, away from the life of the city, we were taken into the midst of the great wonders of nature," wrote traveler Jemima Morrell, "and seemed to leave the fashion of this world at a distance."
Roberts read accounts from the Cook tour in 2015 after the photography museum Fotostiftung Schweiz commissioned him to explore tourism in Switzerland. Using the website Sightsmap and data from the tourism office, Roberts hunted down the most popular viewing platforms and the most popular times to go. He took two three-week trips in 2016: one in February and another in July.
Once he arrived at a location, Roberts clambered up a nearby roof with his large format camera. He camped out for several hours, watching people as they hopped off the buses, zipped up gondolas, and bustled about the viewing platform for the best photo op. Twenty minutes later, they were off to the next attraction. Roberts found it all a little disheartening.
“It’s very much a thing now, this idea of experiencing something through a device and being able to geotag it,” Roberts says. “There’s this collective sense that we need to identify where we are and have people immediately engage with it and like it.”
It's not to say people don't appreciate an epic view. But the journey to the top is so easy, you might just forget it if you don't snap a photo.
Sight Sacralization* is on view at Fotostiftung Schweiz in Winterthur, Switzerland through May 7, 2017.*
