Over the past two hundred years, transportation technology has enabled citizens of any nation to visit, for the purposes of entertainment and leisure, nearly any place on the entire globe. Nations compete for tourists, promoting themselves by showing off their beautiful landscapes and by holding out promises of previously unattainable excitement. As a result, locations and landscapes once considered sublime are becoming increasingly mediated and commodified into both products and elements of national identity constructs.

As digital photographs make possible the instant transmission of...