Travels

My day-to-day job requires me to travel a lot. I beat my own record by vis­it­ing forty-six coun­tries in 2010. I used my large format cam­era in only two of them, in one I used medi­um format. This does not alter the fact that all of my travels have been teach­ing me respect and under­stand­ing for oth­er cul­tures as well as help­ing me per­ceive col­our and unique­ness in the world that sur­rounds us. Nevertheless, my heart always wants to return to the moun­tains and the deserts. Their majest­ic beauty fas­cin­ates me and I also dis­cov­er that beauty in the smal­ler detail once I am able to reflect on it. I usu­ally wish to record such majesty straight away. Typically though, I am able to visu­al­ise the desired effect only on a second or a sub­sequent vis­it. It is after many returns, how­ever, that I truly dis­cov­er the detail, as it tends to hide well away from first glances. I have been very lucky to vis­it the Colorado Plateau thirty-eight times, and each time I find some­thing new that I had not seen before. I find it inter­est­ing that pho­to­graphs of the detail tend to suc­ceed on a first attempt, per­haps because of the num­ber of pri­or vis­its to their loc­a­tion. If only I could, I would like to bring my large format cam­era every­where more than once.

Karolina Vyšata inter­viewed me in October 2010 for a photo book that accom­pan­ies the (Be)Longing exhib­i­tion, which she has cur­ated. This was her ori­gin­al ques­tion, which I have answered above:

Travel is your oth­er pas­sion. How do you select places and objects that you want to record on film? When you see some­thing for the first time do you instantly know “This is it!”? Are there, per­haps, places that you vis­it many times, return­ing and pho­to­graph­ing them again?