Opposite of pretty: You’ll never see this in a tourist photo

Artist Oliver Curtis takes photos of whatever lies opposite to world landmarks, pointing his camera in the other direction to reveal what always remains out of sight in classic tourist shots.

No Eiffel Tower, Taj Mahal or Statue of Liberty in sight - though taken at the world-famous landmarks, these photographs focus on what lies opposite the tourist attractions.

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Curtis’s first solo exhibition Volte-face will premiere at London's Royal Geographical Society in September 2016, displaying his pensive images from the world’s most-photographed historic sites, taken over a period of four years. 

The project started coming together after a trip Curtis made in 2012 to the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, where the photographer first realized the striking contrast between what usually goes into a photo album versus what one sees by simply “standing at one of the great wonders of the world facing the ‘wrong’ way.”