Oliver Curtis’s Volte-Face: Thirty Views Facing Away from Famous Landmarks

You arrive at a famous landmark, lift the camera and recognise the composition before taking the picture. So many people have photographed it from that spot that the image almost seems to be waiting for you.

Oliver Curtis’s Volte-Face begins with a different movement: turn around. The landmark stays behind the camera, and the world normally excluded from the souvenir photograph takes its place.

The view that usually gets left out

Curtis photographed the surroundings opposite well-known sites, allowing paths, buildings, visitors and everyday details to become the subject. His photography website presents the project alongside information about the book.

The point is not that the familiar monument is unworthy of attention, or that facing away automatically creates a better photograph. It is that a famous view can direct our attention so strongly that we fail to notice the place around it.

A caption naming the unseen landmark becomes part of the experience. You imagine what is behind the photographer while studying what is actually in front of you.

Oliver Curtis’s authorship and the 2016 exhibition

Volte-Face is a photographic project by Oliver Curtis. The location captions and photographer credit are integral to reading the series: they connect each outward-looking view to the landmark behind the camera and to Curtis’s deliberate choice of where to stand.

The London exhibition dates in the earlier article referred to 2016. They are historical context, not an invitation to an upcoming exhibition. Use the artist’s current information for publications, prints or any new presentation.

Try the idea without copying the project

On your next outing, make three photographs from an authorised public place. First, take the view that drew you there. Second, turn around and photograph what you had not been looking at. Third, move a short distance and choose a detail that connects the two.

Write one sentence for each image. Describe what you can see before explaining what it means to you. A delivery entrance, a bench or a patch of worn paving may reveal how the attraction fits into everyday life.

The exercise works near home too. A familiar square can become more interesting when you stop treating its best-known building as the only possible subject.

Let other people remain people

A new angle may include visitors, workers or residents. Avoid making somebody’s unguarded moment the punchline of a photograph. Ask permission for close portraits and respect restrictions, especially in places of worship, memorials and private spaces.

Thoughtful travel photography does not require an empty scene. It requires a clear reason for including what you include.

Bring the wider place into your memories

Our look at expectations and reality in travel images explores another reason to pay attention to the frame. AirPano’s city panoramas show how viewpoint and projection can transform a familiar destination in a different way.

Curtis’s invitation is simple enough to take with you: enjoy the landmark, then look elsewhere as well. The photograph you did not expect to make may become the one that best recalls the day.

What changes when the landmark leaves the frame

Oliver Curtis’s Volte-Face reverses the usual relationship between a famous attraction and its surroundings. Instead of treating the space behind the photographer as irrelevant, the series makes that space the subject. The Giza golf-course observation explains the idea particularly well: a familiar monument can stand beside a landscape that rarely enters its standard portrait.

The locations range from the Louvre and Eiffel Tower to Robben Island, Auschwitz and the Korean demilitarised zone. Those subjects do not carry interchangeable meanings. A reversal at an art museum can reveal spectatorship; at a memorial or former prison it can raise questions about the setting of remembrance. The photographs need their location captions precisely because the celebrated object is absent.

The London exhibition announcement referred to 2016. Volte-Face's lasting interest is the change in attention produced by turning the camera. Look at a picture before reading the caption and describe its ordinary details; then add the knowledge of the unseen landmark. A foreground near a museum may suggest spectatorship, while one near a memorial asks different questions about remembrance. The method is simple, but the location prevents every reversal from meaning the same thing.