Exploring the ‘Unphotogenic Beauty of Our Journeys’
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 11.19.07 | 11:05 AM ET
Thomas Swick recently flipped through a new, photo-filled coffee table book from National Geographic called “Journeys of a Lifetime.” He couldn’t get past the language in the title. One can photograph a place, he notes, but one can’t photograph the essence of a journey, because a journey mixes the internal and the external.
The notion prompted a thoughtful column and this recollection:
In high school I traveled to Italy with the Latin Clubs of New Jersey. The trip was full of the photogenic—monuments, churches, fountains—but what I recall most vividly is a group of European schoolgirls walking through Pompeii with unshaven legs. They were exotic, incidental, startling (pictures had adequately prepared me for the ruins), a sign that the world was more interesting than I knew.
Related on World Hum:
* 1,000 Places to Not go Before You Die
* Q&A with Thomas Swick: A Way to See the World
Photo by chadmill via Flickr, (Creative Commons).