This article was published on the Worldette Website and replicated below.
My life in travel photos
From faded childhood holiday albums to polished instagram shots, travel photography has evolved alongside our own wanderlust. Guest writer Jessica Burdon reflects on the cameras that have journeyed with her through life and the time she gave them up.
Since explorers sailed across oceans to conquer foreign lands, writing what they learned in log books and sketching what they saw, recording our experiences has been an intrinsic part of travel. And as soon as the technology was available, it was often through photography.
Yet with its growing popularity, has photography now become more than a way to capture the memories of our journeys? Are journeys now being taken to create memories worth recording?
Family on film
When I was growing up in Australia, the photos of our family road-trips to Avoca Beach or Noosa were matt squares of photographic paper with curved corners and faded pastel colours.
Some hung in frames around our house and the rest were stored in albums stacked in the linen cupboard.
In my teens, my sister set up a make-shift darkroom in our cellar to blow up the shots she took on our family trips. They served as her art as well as our posterity. She won a high-school award for her black and white version of pigeons in St Mark’s Square.
I took my own turn behind the camera when I went on a school-organized trip to Kakadu National Park in Australia’s north. Flipping through the developed photos afterwards brought both surprises and familiar amusement in re-living the trip. I stuck my favorites on my bedroom wall.
After high school, my girlfriend and I rushed to Europe. We took photos of each other in front of the Eiffel Tower and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Although the proof of where we had been was stolen with my camera in a Dublin bus station. I could only wonder whether those undeveloped photos had captured details beyond what I had taken in with my own two eyes.
Going digital
Digital cameras changed everything.
My holiday snaps of backpacking in Thailand during university holidays were a symmetrical sequence of smiles, sun and beauty. We could see the photos as we went along, and deleted shots with eyes closed. Bad hair days seemed non-existent. We emailed the images intermittently to friends and family from internet cafes.
After graduation, I uprooted to London, just as Facebook took hold. On our European weekenders, waiters were roped into taking a shot of group dinners on every person’s camera.
The digital takes of our plastered smiles could be cropped and primped with Photoshop before being published on Facebook. Trips started to revolve around being photogenic; moments were manufactured.
Throwing the camera away
I rebelled.
I moved to Brazil and gave my camera away to a homeless boy in Ipanema. I was left feeling free and spontaneous, living adventures unrecorded.
I forced myself to remember the moments, the backgrounds, the light, even the smells, because I had no backup. I watched a sunset with more intensity in an attempt to memorize it; I had to be more present.
I returned to London, and Brazil was but a distant passion. Brazilian songs on the radio or coconut water in store fridges triggered memories in abstract beauty and color.
I’m not sure whether photos would have been more or less glossy.
Smart phones
By the time I slipped across the pond to New York, iPhones had become standard, which meant people had cameras with them on trains and at parties, in fact everywhere.
Spontaneous street antics could be uploaded instantly. Daily life became noteworthy; photos weren’t just for special occasions and travel blogs.
The camera quality on iPhones improved to the extent that many stopped bothering with cameras for their travels. When I holidayed with my sister, even her children took photos of each other on her iPhones. They posed instinctively and prompted the adults to take photos of their sandcastles.
By comparison, my childhood photographs seemed quaint with the vague awareness we had of the camera, and the abandon that came from knowing the images would probably be stashed in a cupboard. Yet they were becoming eroded in places, so my mother scanned them onto her computer to preserve them.
I wasn’t the only one hankering for old school charm. Photo booths cropped up in bars and at weddings, taking us back to the Polaroids of my parents’ time. And Instagramimitated the faded look of photos from old film. Its followers even resist smiling, to appear wistful and unaware of the camera; or they stared intently, as if posing for a turn of the century portrait that takes minutes to develop.
Perhaps over time we will become so ambivalent to cameras that we can, once again, be truly natural in holiday photos.
Back to the old school
In the meantime, I have rebelled once again. I invested in an SLR, a glorious Nikon D7000 with an enormous lens.
It is digital, granted, but it feels like a step back in time – the hefty clack and cupping my hand over an enormous lens to zoom, not to mention it’s too heavy for self-takes and the high resolution makes the photos difficult to email.
Friends claimed it would be a pain to lug around and an invitation to be robbed in poorer countries. Yet I took my chunk of machinery to Marrakesh and the snake charmers in the bazaar didn’t take much notice. After all, that whole city is from another time.
No doubt more years of travel will bring more memories, more progression in the world of photography, and more attempts at rebellion on my part.
Perhaps I will regret not taking more photos when I’m old and my memory starts to fail me. Or perhaps I will be happy to have hazy recollections of myself as more beautiful and my travels more fantastical than they really were.
Family on film
When I was growing up in Australia, the photos of our family road-trips to Avoca Beach or Noosa were matt squares of photographic paper with curved corners and faded pastel colours.
Some hung in frames around our house and the rest were stored in albums stacked in the linen cupboard.
In my teens, my sister set up a make-shift darkroom in our cellar to blow up the shots she took on our family trips. They served as her art as well as our posterity. She won a high-school award for her black and white version of pigeons in St Mark’s Square.
I took my own turn behind the camera when I went on a school-organized trip to Kakadu National Park in Australia’s north. Flipping through the developed photos afterwards brought both surprises and familiar amusement in re-living the trip. I stuck my favorites on my bedroom wall.
After high school, my girlfriend and I rushed to Europe. We took photos of each other in front of the Eiffel Tower and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Although the proof of where we had been was stolen with my camera in a Dublin bus station. I could only wonder whether those undeveloped photos had captured details beyond what I had taken in with my own two eyes.
Going digital
Digital cameras changed everything.
My holiday snaps of backpacking in Thailand during university holidays were a symmetrical sequence of smiles, sun and beauty. We could see the photos as we went along, and deleted shots with eyes closed. Bad hair days seemed non-existent. We emailed the images intermittently to friends and family from internet cafes.
After graduation, I uprooted to London, just as Facebook took hold. On our European weekenders, waiters were roped into taking a shot of group dinners on every person’s camera.
The digital takes of our plastered smiles could be cropped and primped with Photoshop before being published on Facebook. Trips started to revolve around being photogenic; moments were manufactured.
Throwing the camera away
I rebelled.
I moved to Brazil and gave my camera away to a homeless boy in Ipanema. I was left feeling free and spontaneous, living adventures unrecorded.
I forced myself to remember the moments, the backgrounds, the light, even the smells, because I had no backup. I watched a sunset with more intensity in an attempt to memorize it; I had to be more present.
I returned to London, and Brazil was but a distant passion. Brazilian songs on the radio or coconut water in store fridges triggered memories in abstract beauty and color.
I’m not sure whether photos would have been more or less glossy.
Smart phones
By the time I slipped across the pond to New York, iPhones had become standard, which meant people had cameras with them on trains and at parties, in fact everywhere.
Spontaneous street antics could be uploaded instantly. Daily life became noteworthy; photos weren’t just for special occasions and travel blogs.
The camera quality on iPhones improved to the extent that many stopped bothering with cameras for their travels. When I holidayed with my sister, even her children took photos of each other on her iPhones. They posed instinctively and prompted the adults to take photos of their sandcastles.
By comparison, my childhood photographs seemed quaint with the vague awareness we had of the camera, and the abandon that came from knowing the images would probably be stashed in a cupboard. Yet they were becoming eroded in places, so my mother scanned them onto her computer to preserve them.
I wasn’t the only one hankering for old school charm. Photo booths cropped up in bars and at weddings, taking us back to the Polaroids of my parents’ time. And Instagramimitated the faded look of photos from old film. Its followers even resist smiling, to appear wistful and unaware of the camera; or they stared intently, as if posing for a turn of the century portrait that takes minutes to develop.
Perhaps over time we will become so ambivalent to cameras that we can, once again, be truly natural in holiday photos.
Back to the old school
In the meantime, I have rebelled once again. I invested in an SLR, a glorious Nikon D7000 with an enormous lens.
It is digital, granted, but it feels like a step back in time – the hefty clack and cupping my hand over an enormous lens to zoom, not to mention it’s too heavy for self-takes and the high resolution makes the photos difficult to email.
Friends claimed it would be a pain to lug around and an invitation to be robbed in poorer countries. Yet I took my chunk of machinery to Marrakesh and the snake charmers in the bazaar didn’t take much notice. After all, that whole city is from another time.
No doubt more years of travel will bring more memories, more progression in the world of photography, and more attempts at rebellion on my part.
Perhaps I will regret not taking more photos when I’m old and my memory starts to fail me. Or perhaps I will be happy to have hazy recollections of myself as more beautiful and my travels more fantastical than they really were.