Travel is often treated as a moral good, a proof of openness, curiosity, and global awareness in an increasingly interconnected world. Yet it frequently reproduces the very power dynamics the socially conscious claim to reject. The assumption is subtle but persistent: that the ability to enter another place or culture confers the right to interpret it, document it, and take something from it. This familiar logic underpins global intervention and extraction, now appearing in everyday movement across borders.
Travel has never been easier. More people cross borders today than at any point in history, and images of distant places circulate instantly, endlessly, and often without context. Yet genuine cultural understanding feels increasingly fragile—not despite this access, but because access is so easily mistaken for insight. For decades, travel has been framed as personal freedom: a flight out, a new city, a “life-changing” experience. But travel is not merely movement through geography. It is a relationship between the visitor and the visited, between narrative and reality. In an age of social media and curated lives, travel increasingly resembles acquisition: the collection of images, stories, experiences, even transformation itself. Observation becomes consumption. Cultures become content. People become symbols. Landscapes become backdrops.
What is lost in this process is reciprocity—the understanding that entering another’s world is a significant and responsible act. This dynamic is not limited to travel from wealthier nations to poorer ones, nor is it confined to any single geography. It emerges wherever there is asymmetry of mobility, visibility, cultural capital, or narrative control. Extraction does not require poverty; rather, it requires imbalance. Wherever one group arrives with greater freedom to observe, document, interpret, or leave, the ethical questions raised by travel remain the same.
Visual documentation sits at the centre of this imbalance. Images are often treated as neutral records, yet they are powerful tools of selection, framing, and control. The act of photographing or filming is rarely passive; it imposes standards, shapes interpretation, and decides what is seen and what is excluded. In the pursuit of authenticity, subjects are often measured against external expectations, rendered legible only when they conform to familiar narratives. What cannot be easily translated, aestheticised, or consumed is often ignored. In this way, representation can quietly reinforce hierarchies long after overt colonial structures have faded.
As a cultural conservation photographer, I have spent years immersed in unfamiliar cultures, often in remote or politically sensitive regions. Early in my career, I entered communities without invitation, driven by curiosity and a search for meaning at a time when such access was far less common. That experience taught me that intention alone is not enough. Without ethical restraint, even sincere curiosity can reproduce the very dynamics it seeks to reject. Today, I document only those places where invitations are extended by community leaders and elders. Through this shift, I have come to see stillness, humility, and recognition as essential skills a global citizen must cultivate. Stillness is not passivity; it is discipline. It requires slowing assumptions, suspending judgment, and knowing when not to take.
Ethical travel begins with acknowledging power. Some travellers move through the world with extraordinary ease, supported by passports that grant swift entry, flexible mobility, and the assurance of return. Others face layers of restriction: visas that demand proof of income, exhaustive documentation, and the constant possibility of denial. This imbalance shapes not only who can travel, but how travel functions ethically. Where movement is easy and exit is guaranteed, the risk of extraction increases—not necessarily of resources, but of stories, images, and authority over representation. A visitor carries invisible privileges: Mobility, currency, and the option to leave. Those who remain are more likely to bear the lasting consequences of how their places and lives are portrayed.
To ignore this imbalance is to mistake access for entitlement. Colonialism did not disappear; its logic persisted. Today, it appears not only in policy rooms and military strategy, but in the intimate choices individuals make as they cross borders—what they take, what they share, and what they assume they are entitled to. Stillness and humility demand observation before interpretation and permission before presence. Sometimes that permission is explicit; often it is implied. It asks us to recognise that not every story belongs to the outsider, not every moment should be recorded, and not every imbalance invites intervention.
This runs counter to dominant travel narratives that prize fearlessness and conquest. Yet some of the most meaningful encounters emerge precisely when control dissolves, when plans falter, silence replaces explanation, and vulnerability replaces certainty. In those moments, the traveller is no longer the protagonist, but a participant in a larger human context. Presence itself has impact, and sometimes the most respectful response is restraint.
As global movement accelerates, the question is no longer whether we travel, but how. Do we arrive seeking validation or connection? Do we extract meaning, or allow ourselves to be changed without claiming ownership? Stillness and humility ask us to see without possessing, to witness without control, and to leave space for voices that do not require translation.
What is at stake is not only the dignity of the places we enter, but our own capacity for ethical attention. Travel needs humility again because movement without it trains us to confuse access with understanding, presence with permission, and visibility with care. Ethical travel is not separate from global responsibility; it is one of its most personal expressions. In a world defined by speed and exposure, humility may be the only way travel remains an ethical act at all.
This article is authored by Sej Saraiya, founding director, World Culture Film Festival and board member, American Society of Media Photographers.
