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"Among all the places that we go to but don’t look at properly or that leave us indifferent, a few occasionally stand out with an impact that overwhelms us and forces us to take heed. They possess a quality that might clumsily be called beauty. This may not involve prettiness nor any of the obvious features that guidebooks associate with beauty spots, having recourse to the word might be just another way of saying that we like a place.
A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, “I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me”. But beauty is fugitive, being frequently found in places to which we may never return or else resulting from rare conjunctions of season, light and weather. How then to possess it, how to hold on to the floating train, the halvalike bricks or the English valley? The camera provides one option. Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place, our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter."
- Alain De Botton
In almost exactly one year, Magda and myself traveled to 17 countries on three continents. Attracted to the idea of novelty and change, we made a list of places neither of us has been to before and set off on our world tour with an idea of what we'd see.
Travel is always in danger of being reduced to a shopping list. In China, one must see the Great Wall, the Terra-cotta Warriors and Tiananmen Square. The list is a confirmation of what's been spoken of and photographed before us. However, seeing these places doesn't give us much more visual information than we already had, rather it's the journey that gets us to them that informs us of the environment in which they exist. The context of iconic destinations is always just outside the frame of the photograph. Who is selling roasted nuts to the left of the entrance? What neighborhood does the bus roll through before delivering the traveler to the next place on the list? It becomes apparent to anybody who has traveled greatly that it is the journey itself, the in-between spaces, that remain behind as our most vivid memories.
The selection of photographs here makes for an unusual travel book in that the majority of the images are of no recognizable location or iconic landmark. When a familiar scene makes an appearance, it has been rightfully de-glorified, set amongst other images that are perhaps more descriptive of the country in which they were taken. Uluru, the Australian monolith, is shown large as (instead of larger than) life. It is visually no more or less important to the story of its country than a gate in the outback, a gate which accesses nothing but an endless stretch of more nothing.
This book explores the DNA of the countries we visited and was greatly influenced by the way that we like to travel. Meeting local people is important, and persons we met are represented here. Looking in windows is important, as is glancing behind walls and hanging out in empty lots. What does a Maori's garage look like? Has someone posted pictures of Mao on their Hutong to ward off the demolition crew like a cross worn to discourage vampires? What icons of daily life are more important to the natives than the icons that tourists pilgrimage to? The DNA of a country is in the everyday workings of its people, what they've built and where they sleep. The DNA resides in between items on a list.
A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, “I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me”. But beauty is fugitive, being frequently found in places to which we may never return or else resulting from rare conjunctions of season, light and weather. How then to possess it, how to hold on to the floating train, the halvalike bricks or the English valley? The camera provides one option. Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place, our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter."
- Alain De Botton
In almost exactly one year, Magda and myself traveled to 17 countries on three continents. Attracted to the idea of novelty and change, we made a list of places neither of us has been to before and set off on our world tour with an idea of what we'd see.
Travel is always in danger of being reduced to a shopping list. In China, one must see the Great Wall, the Terra-cotta Warriors and Tiananmen Square. The list is a confirmation of what's been spoken of and photographed before us. However, seeing these places doesn't give us much more visual information than we already had, rather it's the journey that gets us to them that informs us of the environment in which they exist. The context of iconic destinations is always just outside the frame of the photograph. Who is selling roasted nuts to the left of the entrance? What neighborhood does the bus roll through before delivering the traveler to the next place on the list? It becomes apparent to anybody who has traveled greatly that it is the journey itself, the in-between spaces, that remain behind as our most vivid memories.
The selection of photographs here makes for an unusual travel book in that the majority of the images are of no recognizable location or iconic landmark. When a familiar scene makes an appearance, it has been rightfully de-glorified, set amongst other images that are perhaps more descriptive of the country in which they were taken. Uluru, the Australian monolith, is shown large as (instead of larger than) life. It is visually no more or less important to the story of its country than a gate in the outback, a gate which accesses nothing but an endless stretch of more nothing.
This book explores the DNA of the countries we visited and was greatly influenced by the way that we like to travel. Meeting local people is important, and persons we met are represented here. Looking in windows is important, as is glancing behind walls and hanging out in empty lots. What does a Maori's garage look like? Has someone posted pictures of Mao on their Hutong to ward off the demolition crew like a cross worn to discourage vampires? What icons of daily life are more important to the natives than the icons that tourists pilgrimage to? The DNA of a country is in the everyday workings of its people, what they've built and where they sleep. The DNA resides in between items on a list.