Roger Minick
Couple at Capitol Reef National Park, Utah, 1980. American photographer Roger Minick started shooting his Sightseer series of color photos in 1980 as sort of a tourist time capsule.
Roger Minick
Woman with Scarf at Inspiration Point, Yosemite National Park, California, 1980. Minick got interested in the phenomenon of sightseeing while observing tourists at scenic overlooks in the American West.
Roger Minick
Girls in Matching Pink Dresses at Sunset Point, Bryce Canyon National Park, 1980. Minick looked for an "elusive something" that made the photos work. This one, he said, "was just almost too easy."
Roger Minick
Photographing Old Faithful Geyser, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 1980. This candid shot was taken during visitors' mad rush to photograph the erupting geyser.
Roger Minick
Couple Taking Polaroids at Crater lake National Park, Oregon, 1980. Minick often offered to take Polaroids of his subjects before he photographed them with his other camera. This couple had a Polaroid camera, too.
Roger Minick
Three Women at Overlook, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina, 1999. After his first trips in the 1980s, Minick resumed the series in the late 1990s, photographing sightseers in the Midwest and the East.
Roger Minick
Parking Lot at Inspiration Point, Yosemite National Park, California, 1980. The trappings of tourism -- tour buses, motor homes, casual dress -- are part of what drew Minick to sightseeing.
Roger Minick
Father & Son at Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park, California, 1981. Many of Minick's subjects wore clothes that made it easy to "jump out of the car and take in the view and get back in the car and move on," he said.
Roger Minick
Birder at Peaks of Otter, Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia, 1999. This birder was "so earnest and ready to go and it was early in the morning and he just couldn't wait," Minick said.
Roger Minick
Man with Dog in Front of Motorhome, Zion Canyon National Park, Utah, 1980. At first, Minick resisted the idea of the Sightseer series because it was such a departure from the formal landscape photography he'd done in the past.
Roger Minick
Gettysburg National Military Park, Pennsylvania, 1999. Minick wasn't sure about this shot, but "it became kind of interesting when the figures kind of blend in with the statue, and then the kid (at right) ... he kind of does make it work somehow."
Roger Minick
Two Hutterite couples at Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, 1999. Color drives the series, which Minick realized after first photographing sightseers in black and white.
Roger Minick
Mother & Son at Lower Falls Overlook, Yellowstone National Park, 1980. Minick used a hand-held camera for the project to allow for more spontaneity.
Roger Minick
Airstream at Yosemite National Park, California, 1980. Vehicle and landscape photos are the exception, not the norm, in the Sightseer series.
Roger Minick
Boy with Feathered Headress at Lower Falls Overlook, Yellowstone National Park, 1980. Minick spent time at hundreds of overlooks, scouting for visually arresting combinations of people and scenery.
Roger Minick
Twins with Matching Outfits at Lower Falls Overlook, Yellowstone National Park, 1980. Minick's interactions with his subjects were usually brief, but he tried to capture a range of expressions.
Roger Minick
Man with Poodle at Sunset Point, Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, 1980. Minick used an on-camera flash to get the right amount of fill light.
Roger Minick
Mother & Son at Minervas Terrace, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 1980. Minick was inspired by snapshots, but he wanted his series to present more than the typical bright smiles.
Roger Minick
Three Men in Color Coordinated Shirts at Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 1980. Minick spotted these men from a distance. "I saw those three spots of color and I said, 'Oh my God, that's too good.'"
Roger Minick
Children at Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 1980. Minick had to work quickly to get his shot before subjects moved on to their next stop.
Roger Minick
Woman Taking Photograph at Many Glacier Hotel, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1981. Some of the subjects' wardrobe choices were questionable. Not this "very classy lady."
Roger Minick
Couple at Canyonlands National Park, Utah, 1980. The series "addressed what people wore and how it juxtaposed with the background and the landscape," Minick said.
Roger Minick
Family at Grand Tetons National Park, Wyoming, 1980. Over time, Minick decided that families that were subtly color-coordinated got along better.
Roger Minick
Woman with Red Sweater at Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park, California, 1981. Minick usually approached his subjects at overlooks and asked to take their pictures. He didn't get their names, but he often wonders about the tourists he photographed.
Roger Minick
Couple Viewing Grand Tetons, Grand Tetons National Park, Wyoming, 1980. Despite the hot, tired business of tourism, Minick said most of the people he encountered were genuinely awe-struck.

Story highlights

Photographer Roger Minick started a series featuring sightseers in 1980

Colorful clothing contrasted with sweeping scenery drew Minick to his subjects

CNN  — 

They sport leisure suits and pink rompers, cowboy hats, logo T-shirts and blue checked pants. They tote cameras and binoculars, and they want photographic proof that they’ve been where they say they’ve been.

American photographer Roger Minick calls the genus “Sightseer Americanus.”

In the early 1980s, Minick captured a cross-section of tourists across the United States in his Sightseer series, a project he picked up again in the late 1990s and 2000. The determined sightseers’ fashion choices, delicious throwbacks for today’s viewer, were a big part of what drew Minick to his subjects.

“I’d be at a great distance at an overlook, and I’d see a couple arrive, get out of their car. And before I saw them or their faces, I would see what they were wearing, their colors, and I would be drawn to them for that reason,” said Minick, 72, who’s based in Danville, California.

Those colors were missing the first time he set out to document tourists crisscrossing the American West to soak up the country’s vast national parks and wide-open landscapes.

In 1979, he shot in black and white. That was a mistake “because the colors are so interesting, the juxtaposition of what people wear and the backgrounds.”

So the next year he retraced his steps, this time in color.

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A time capsule

Minick’s interest in photographing sightseers was piqued in 1976 while he was teaching at an Ansel Adams workshop at Yosemite National Park. Teaching alongside the legendary landscape photographer, Minick noticed how visitors arriving by the bus- and RV-load would elbow through the crowd of student photographers to take smiling snapshots in front of the dramatic scenery.

“And that became more interesting to me than taking the classic photograph of Yosemite Valley, which had been done a gazillion times before that,” Minick said. “So I became more interested in them. And then I started to look at the people closely and their faces and the way they were dressed, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is pretty unique.’”

Inspired by the classic snapshot – that proof-of-visit required by many travelers – Minick set out to create a time capsule that would become more interesting as the years passed. But he wanted the photographs to bear his own artistic stamp.

“If I was truly doing the snapshot, I would have photographed them usually in the first few seconds as they presented themselves, often with a big cheesy smile,” he said. “I think that’s where I departed and I wanted to transcend that and show people maybe in a more vulnerable … or what I see as a more neutral expression.”

He took a little bit more time, although rarely more than a few minutes, to find a moment that worked.

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Changing times

According to his field notes on the project, Minick wanted to explore what motivated people “at great expense of time, money and effort, to visit these far-off places of wonder and curiosity.”

Overall, their motivations were good.

“Certainly there is the gross aspect of tourism … the big Winnebagos, and American tourists can be loud and noisy and carry on and all that, but I think for the most part my sense was that people really did appreciate these places that they went to on some level,” he said.

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That appreciation is still there, Minick finds, but the contemporary selfie culture has shifted the landscape. “There is a kind of frenetic running around, more so than I remember back in the 1980s,” he said.

Yet despite today’s photo frenzy, there’s still time to pause and look back at vacationers past.