Members of the Forum submitted around 40 travel photographs for discussion. The RPS definition of travel photography was used as a guide: ‘Images that express a feeling of a time and place, portray a land, its people or a culture in its natural state. They have no geographical limitations.’ The most popular categories were people (35%), buildings/towns (28%), landscape (12%) and coasts/water (9%). Countries ranged from Norway to Botswana and Cuba to China.
Some pictures followed the brief closely and were unmistakably of, say, India; and some gave a more general impression of abroad, of otherness. Capturing the idea of a unique place in a single image is almost impossible without resorting to postcard icons. What is important is what they mean to the photographer and what he or she is trying to convey, not whether they comply with how the RPS views the world.
Photo: 1. Abandoned church, Kayakoy, Turkey, July 2002; 2. Between Deir Ez-Zour and Palmyra, Syria, September 2010