Black Tourism

Black Tourism

It’s not unusual for photojournalists to travel to places that have been scarred by genocide, accident and natural disaster. But photographer Ambroise Tézenas has spent the last few years turning that norm on its head to capture what happens to those sites after the journalists leave, when they become tourist destinations.In 2008, Tézenas was looking for his next photographic project when he read that a train, swept into the Sri Lankan jungle by a tsunami, was still there four years after the fact. Tézenas happened to have been in Sri Lanka at the time of the storm—on a vacation that became a job—and was fascinated to learn that the train had become a place of pilgrimage.“Some tourists were coming to have their pictures taken there,” the photographer says. “I thought about what the victims and the survivors would think.”That question became the seed of a long-term project, Dark Tourism, now on view at Galerie Mélanie Rio in Nantes, France. Tézenas immersed himself in the tourist experience: he always traveled with a tour group, always paid for the experience and only took pictures of things any tourist could see. Sometimes that ethos meant his pictures were restrained—he only had the time allotted by the tourism groups, so he was unable to wait for ideal light—but it also allowed the photographer to comment on more than the scenery.

1. Visitors in front of Xuankou middle school, where over 53 died, and Xuankou grade school, where about 250 died. 

2. On July 2, 1947, the Polish Parliament passed an act on the preservation “for All Time of the Site of the Former Camp.” In 2011, the Auschwitz Memorial was visited by 1.4 million people—a record number in the history of the Memorial. 

3. Auschwitz I. Block 4. Cans that contained Cyclone B used for killing in gas chambers. 

4. The grounds of Dealey Plaza. Group tours delve into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and can be as short as half a day or as long as a full nine-to-six day. Some include lunch in the West End in Dallas near the Sixth Floor Depository Museum. 

5. Funfair in Prypiat, a fenced ghost town near Chernobyl. Tours take visitors to the closed zone within a radius of 30 km from Chernobyl station. Tourists can be photographed against the background of the 4th reactor. 

6. Breakfast in the exclusion zone: “the quality of food is guaranteed” says the tourist brochure. Entrance to the Chernobyl exclusion zone is possible only with the help of permits, which can be organized by tour groups. 

7. On the afternoon of June 10, 1944, a detachment of SS troops arrived in Oradour-sur-Glane and rounded up the inhabitants, including those they had collected from nearby farms on their way in. At the end of the day, the SS had murdered a total of 642 men, women and children. Following the war the French government decided to preserve the town in its ruined state as a memorial to the murdered inhabitants. 

8. This particular killing field is the site of the brutal executions of more than 17,000 men, women and children, most of whom had first suffered through interrogation, torture and deprivation in the S-21 Prison in Phnom Penh. The Choeung Ek Memorial is now a group of mass graves, killing areas and a memorial stupa containing thousands of human skulls and long bones. 

9. Torture bed in Building "A" of a secret prison, which in 1977 and 1978 was converted into a set of rooms with windows that were paneled with glass to minimize the sound of prisoners’ screams heard outside the facility in times of torture. Building “A” was used for detaining cadres who were accused of leading the uprising against the Pol Pot revolution. On Jan. 7, 1979, the government collected all the evidence in the prison such as photographs, films, prisoner confession archives, torture tools, shackles and victims' corpses. Now the evidence of the criminal regime is on display for visitors.

10. Abandoned strip mall seen on a tour of post-hurricane devastation. 

11. Visitors enter the only military prison in Europe open to tourists. The tour includes a "historical interactive reality show" in which participants can play the parts of the prisoners. 

12. A rugged bushy trail where thousands of Mujahideen had positions during the years of occupation. The museum aims "to preserve the places where the Mujahideen lived, giving people the chance to be acquainted with the style of the unique experience of the Islamic resistance against the Israeli enemy, since its occupation of Beirut in 1982." 

13. A rugged bushy trail where thousands of Mujahideen had positions during the years of occupation. The museum aims "to preserve the places where the Mujahideen lived, giving people the chance to be acquainted with the style of the unique experience of the Islamic resistance against the Israeli enemy, since its occupation of Beirut in 1982."