photo | "Not Exactly Retired"

Whatever happened to “cheese!”?

A big smile for the camera doesn’t cut it anymore. These days you need to strike a series of elaborate poses, as we saw recently in Southeast Asia.

Do the woman in the window, above, and her friend with the camera have Instagram sites? I’d guess so. Are they “influencers” with sponsors and large audiences? Probably not. But one thing I know for sure: They weren’t unusual.

Simple snapshots have given way to performance across Southeast Asia and beyond. Posing has become a new kind of visual literacy, with people tilting their chins and curling their fingers into hearts, just as in a K-pop music video. Everyone has a smartphone and social media accounts, along with selfie sticks and face-retouching apps.

There’s nothing new about young people expressing themselves; fashion, music, slang and dance have always evolved. Now they’re expressing themselves through images that are elaborately designed, posed, cropped and filtered. We have lots of wannabe Kardashians in our own country as well and I’ve seen them in other parts of the world, too.

What I saw in Asia took this to another level. Many of the young tourists who crossed our path seemed more interested in posing than in learning about where they were visiting. Was this because their countries have a tradition of presenting a carefully curated public self? Was it due to Japanese kawaii culture, with its aesthetic of cuteness, or to Korean beauty influences, or something else?

I can’t explain why it’s become so prevalent, but it has, and I found it interesting. After noticing it repeatedly for about a week, I began quietly snapping the photos you see in this post.

If you hadn’t already noticed this trend yourself, I guarantee you will see it the next time you travel, especially if you go to Southeast Asia.

I hope the people I photographed won’t mind that I shared their poses with you. They clearly wanted their photos to be seen and, well, it didn’t seem like they’d get cheesed easily.