This project is essentially about the way we might look at others, and how they might look at us. Tourism brings with it everything, from the good to the not-so-good, from the disturbing to the indecent. Today, it's a question of offering local people the opportunity to reverse the roles by photographing tourists. The subjects and targets of the cameras change. The perspective changes. This should make us think about attitudes and ways of presenting ourselves in front of others. Make us think about how to represent the other, who is in fact just another self, but only apparently different.

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Interview with Marie Thérèse Champesme (French art historian)

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On the footbridge that leads from Joal to Fadiouth, you have made aphotographic installation which presents the portraits of tourists as well as the Senegalese who photographed them at your request. How did you get this idea for a work you have called Le Pont des Regards?

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I liked the idea of working on a bridge which is a junction and can symbolise relationships between cultures. And especially having seen what happens here, how the tourists photograph people whether they like it or not, I decided to reverse the roles. It is an attempt to change the way we see things, to bring the Western population to understand what we feel when we are taken for a target, the intrusion, the violation that that means. Beyond this, in all these places where tourists and locals are confronted, the question of the perception that one has of the other is raised. The affluent come to photograph the exotic, it is almost anthropology.

 

He comes to fix people's privacy on paper and tries to take photographs which look like what he's expecting. Having said that, the attitude of the locals is also ambiguous. Three quarters of the people are disturbed by this situation and say they can't do anything about it, but some of them find satisfaction in it. This can be seen in the local artefacts proposed to the tourists, it is an illustration of the mugs game. The local craft found here, apart from a few exceptions, have nothing to do with Fadiouth, it is what you can find in all the tourist centres and some tourists like to buy it because it corresponds to what they expect to find.

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Did the people of Joal and Fadiouth willingly accept to help you in this work?

 

It was more difficult than I imagined. At first, I thought I would work with the guides because they are the links, the intermediaries between the tourists and the locals. I had forgotten that the tourists are their source of living, that it is therefore not in their interest to bother those who provide their income, even if their attitude is not correct vis-à-vis the local population. As for the other people whom I asked to participate, they were ready to be involved in the project but few were ready to go through with it. It is a question of modesty, education: even if they know they are pursued, they are proud.

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And how did the tourists react?

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Some of them understood and said "Its natural, we shouldn't photograph people without asking their permission". Others, however, were scandalised, furious. The question of money was often under the surface, whether they said, "You can photograph me, but in my case, I won't make you pay" or on the other hand, "Alright, but you'll have to pay me".

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One day, when I was thinking that this project was very different from the work that you have made until now, you said that you were an "activist" artist. Do you consider this action as revenge?

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I think that whoever has been followed for a long time is allowed to reverse the roles, to put the one who takes in a position to understand what he takes. And it seems obvious to me that the conditions of dialogue between the Black and the White have been established by the White. But I would rather talk of riposte rather than revenge. The riposte may be a position brought about by circumstances: it does not prevent, in the end, the tolerance and the forgiveness invited by the Koran.

 

The riposte must firstly be as regards oneself: we have to know what kind of society we want. If the Africans are capable of inventing ways of life that suit them, that will upset the West because it is them who manage things. The question that concerns me the most, is to know how these set ups that don't correspond to us at all, which alienate us, came about. Until we understand what is going on, we don't even know if we are playing the other man's game. We need to refer to a philosophy of life that is really ours and for the moment it is difficult for us to see this. When we have managed this, we must turn towards the other.

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Click the Link to By Maria Thereza Alves Article : https://universes.art/en/nafas/articles/2004/kan-si