Performing “I Was Here”: Architecture and the Circle of Representation in a Peripheral Place

Abstract Architecture, media, and the spatial practices of tourists relate to one another in complex ways. Images of buildings feature in place promotion strategies, and these representations are replicated in tourists’ own photographs from their visits. The social practices of people have spatial implications as places develop to allow for opportunities for the performance of practices associated with tourism, including photography. By tracing visual representations of four buildings in the regional mining-cum-tourist town of Beaconsfield, Tasmania, through a cross-section of media, we show how media-oriented practices intersect with architecture and tourism in a regional place. Beaconsfield’s historic buildings are mediated and shared by individuals and institutions online as well as in the form of physical objects used as keepsakes and gifts. They are also re-created in situ in the façades of nearby buildings, public artwork, and urban media. By interpreting this socio-spatial phenomenon through a practice-theory lens we theorise the mediatisation of architecture in a peripheral place showing that this process has both social and spatial implications.