Visual reciprocity and #vanlife in the visual commons: Vancouver Island is a VW bus

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to consider the visual impact of VW campervans, and the broader idea of ‘vanlife,’ in spaces where one finds visitors in campervans within their visual commons. It starts with an exploration of the digital visual life course of the Instagram hashtag #vanlife, and discusses the impact of how this digital visual practice manifests in physical visual space. It is argued that considering the physical visual presence of campervans identifies a representational struggle between people ‘from here’ and ‘from away’ wherever ‘here’ might be. As an almost sublime example of ‘vanlife,’ thinking about the ‘VW Bus’ as an evocative visually negotiated experience, the paper considers how their presence transforms the spaces they occupy into particular kinds of prescriptive places their owners imagine. While the main examples here focus on VW campervans on Vancouver Island, Canada, it is hoped that the analysis provided can be used to consider parallel phenomena that assesses how visual practices between ‘visitors,’ ‘residents,’ and ‘tourism brochures’ are negotiated elsewhere.

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