'I Travel Therefore I am' is a visual study of the vicious cycle of aspiration-consumption-validation.
The work analyses the influence of visual media on popular culture in tourism. It is an inquiry into how constant exposure to images of tourist destinations on popular information platforms fuels our aspirations to create similar visual content that one may validate the vacation and become a participant of the trend. With this work, I seek to deconstruct the said popular images, identify their prime signifiers and decontextualise them to form photographs that challenge the set parameters of a ‘perfect image’. The constructed images aim to question the tourist gaze and the constant desire to photograph as tourists. In a pool of infinite simulacrum of popular destinations, how do these aspirations interact with commodified realities of a tourist destination?
 The project is conceived through four different approaches which explore my engagement with multiple forms of information conception and dissemination around tourism. It has presently been created for the following destinations: Goa, Agra, Jaipur, and Mussoorie. 
 In approach A, the set of 8 images (A1-A4) have been constructed to present a critical outlook of the photographs we aspire to take at tourist sites. These images draw elements of desire from each destination based on its history and popular demand and engage the viewer with a dilemma of real and unreal. In approach B (B1-B2), words become images to enable imagination of the visuals which, owing to mass visual consumption, are already placed in the memory. Approach C (C1-C6) is an exploration of data materiality and aesthetic of images. I have sourced popular tourism images from Instagram, treated them with the digital technique of Data Bending by adding accompanying captions and hashtags to the image code. The resultant image is a corrupted construction of the original image which is glitched and highlights our unconscious association with the popular image styles and the digital hashtag world. The act of seeking validation of having visited a popular destination induces tourists to perform in a certain manner and pose in specific ways. Approach D (D1-D2) is a typological construction of a visual dictionary of images curated from Instagram which traces the pattern of how we act as tourists today. 
 I am fascinated by the words used by travel magazines and blogs to describe tourist destinations and commodify escapism. The crossword is the project’s satirical take on this vocabulary. 
 The project stands as a critical analysis of the universal consumerist culture which has changed the image of our cities today.