Dark Tourism

1. What do you think is meant by the term 'dark tourism'?

2. What 'dark tourism' locations do you know about? Make a list with your partner.
Are there any in your country?

3. Do you think there is anything wrong with this kind of tourism? Why are people attracted to going to places
like this?

4. Have you ever been to any places that might be considered dark tourism destinations? How did it make you
feel?

5. Would you like to go to any of these places? Why (not)?

You are going to read a text from the New Yorker about a photographer who visits dark tourism locations. First, read

the text quickly and answer the two questions at the end.

Dark Tourism
The New Yorker, 1st April, 2015

The French photographer Ambroise Tézenas was travelling in Sri Lanka when the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami struck, killing more

than thirty thousand people on the island within minutes. Four years

later, he came across a newspaper article explaining that a train from

the disaster, still sitting where the waves had deposited it in the Sri

Lankan jungle, had become a tourist attraction. Tézenas was perplexed

that anyone could casually visit the remnants of the horror that he had

witnessed. From this article, he found inspiration: he travelled around

the world to sites of historic calamity—from Rwanda and Auschwitz to

Chernobyl and Dealey Plaza—to document their afterlives as

destinations of so-called “dark tourism.”

Rather than take advantage of press access, Tézenas set strict rules limiting himself to the average visitor’s experience. He took paid

tours, spent limited time at each location, and shot only what members of the public could see. The resulting images, which are

collected in the new book “I Was Here,” are complex interrogations—of how countries deal with their past crimes, of the

iSLCollective.com
commodification of tragedy, and of the human impulse to look upon death and disaster. Amid the wreckage of the Wenchuan

earthquake, a tour group gathers for a photo opportunity. In the former Soviet border zone, young people play “escape from the

U.S.S.R.” spy games. At Karostas Cietums, a military prison in Latvia, children over twelve years of age can stay overnight and “live

the life of a prisoner.” “At the end,” Tézenas told me, these sites “leave the individual with not much to understand history.”

However, Tézenas’s images belie the negative judgement that’s often used as an argument against disaster tourism. He said that he

“couldn’t help being moved” by many of the locations he visited, and his empathy extended to his fellow-sightseers. Through his

lens, they appear not as callous sightseeing pictures but as poignant reminders of the macabre memorials. In a commemorative

park in the border town of Maroun al-Ras, the site of a major battle in the 2006 Lebanon war, children play on a brightly painted

jungle gym. In the ghost town of Chernobyl, saplings grow.

Comprehension Questions

1. Why did the photographer decide to visit these locations?

A. He wanted to earn money selling the images.

B. He wanted to meet the same people who had visited the site of the tsunami in Sri Lanka.

C. He wanted to learn more about why people went to these places.

2. Which sentence best describes his experience?

A. He was disgusted by the people who visited these locations.

B. He felt emotional and connected with the feelings of other tourists.

C. He didn't get to see what ordinary people see because he was a journalist.

Now, work with a partner to match the words in bold to their definitions.

1. ________: an event causing great and sudden damage or distress.

2. ________:a young tree
3. ________:to fail to give a true impression of something
4. ________:surrounded by
5. ________:emotionally disturbing because of its connection with death or injury
6. ________:to treat something as a product that can be bought and sold
7. ________:showing/having a cruel disregard for others
8. ________:causing sadness or regret
9. ________:discover something by accident
10. ________:to cause a feeling of emotion and empathy
11. ________:to be very confused

iSLCollective.com