Four years ago, cinematographer Oliver Curtis went to Cairo for a freelance assignment. Like any good tourist, he visited the Great Pyramid of Giza. He was duly impressed, too---not by their immense size or majestic tombs, but by what he saw when he turned around: smoggy suburbs, a brilliant green golf course, and the trash of countless visitors.
"I was struck by the incongruity of how we treat the environment today, right next to such a historical monument,” says Curtis. “Our focus and money are spent on the monuments that become these focal points, while the rest of the environment, that isn’t actually crafted for our pleasure, is completely overlooked.”
That incongruity inspired Volte-Face, which reveals the ugly, the boring, and the downright funny stuff just beyond 45 landmarks from the Taj Mahal to the Hollywood sign. There's a snoozing tourist on the White House lawn, a vendor selling miniature statues at the Roman Colosseum, and a billboard warning about slide safety at the Great Wall of China. At Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Curtis managed to climb to the top when nobody else was around, and caught the cleaners taking a break to gaze at the view.
Volte-Face takes you beyond the guidebook, exposing the artifice of historical sites. That's not to say Curtis doesn't love a good "I-was-there" shot. “I mean, I’m still a tourist,” he says. “I still do a selfie with the bloody thing.”
Volte-Face will be showing at the Royal Geographical Society in London in September.
