“F*cking Tourist”: A Daring Photo Series Exposing Tourism as Pollution

There’s something sacred about being seen, and something deeply intrusive about being captured. In Nicolas Demeersman’s long-running photo series “Fucking Tourist” (2009–ongoing), that thin line between the two is not just crossed, it’s obliterated, with one unapologetic middle finger.

The French photographer, known as Jolipunk, stumbled upon the idea in Bali when a local man shot back, “Fuck off. I don’t want to end up on a postcard.” That single sentence became the backbone of a project that has since traveled across continents, from Peru to Lebanon, Cuba to Jordan, revealing a kind of universal exhaustion with being someone else’s exotic backdrop.

Each portrait is a rebellion wrapped in humor: locals standing proud, giving the finger not to the artist, but to the machine of tourism itself. The kind that turns human beings into “authentic experiences,” that harvests faces, colors, and stories for the traveler’s consumption. Demeersman’s images are confrontational yet oddly intimate; they strip the postcard of its glossy perfection and replace it with something far more human; irritation, irony, truth.

“Every time I take a picture I spend some time in discussion with locals to understand the culture and the way they perceive tourists,” Demeersman explains. These conversations, small, fragile moments of connection, often make their way to his blog, paired with the final portraits. One exchange with a Balinese farmer reads:

The farmer: “The problem here is water.”
Photographer: “But you have running water…”
The farmer: “In your hotel, yes.”

What “Fucking Tourist” captures is not hatred, but fatigue, the tiredness of being objectified, of existing through someone else’s lens. Demeersman invites us to look inward, to confront the violence of seeing without understanding. It’s a project that laughs, protests, and flips the bird, not just at tourists, but at the world’s persistent habit of mistaking presence for ownership.