I’ve started to bring together photographs taken on travels outside the UK over the last few decades. The aim is to produce a photo book, eventually.
It’s proving to be an interesting exercise. On one side the pleasure of discovering previously overlooked pictures that now seem to have some quality; on the other the realisation of how much dross there is. At a practical level there is the challenge of searching through analogue material, compared with the ease of viewing digital images on screen. Fixing a time and place to the analogue pictures is occasionally a challenge due to sloppy on non-existent recording. All time-consuming, but rewarding.
As I started to select pictures, what was a simple desire to bring together a collection that reflected experiences abroad, I was beset by the questions ‘What?’ and ‘Why?’. The answers have begun to cohere into a concept of what the book will and will not about.
It will:
– Be a personal and partial view
– Celebrate, difference and individuality, yet also
– Draw on connections and the everyday
– Embrace both people and places
– Try to establish a narrative
– Reflect the enigmatic and uncertain moments of travel.
It will not:
– Present the picturesque
– Be a catalogue of celebrated monuments
– Be a standard picture book of plates.
I was going to add that it will not include ‘boring pictures’. But while it won’t include pictures that don’t strike a chord with me, I can’t guarantee that other people won’t find them boring.
An unresolved issue is how to structure the book. Chronological? Geographical? Subjects? Themes? A first very crude selection is taking place and I’m anticipating that the right approach will emerge from a review of these pictures once they are all seen together.
The following pictures from previous posts may be included.
