WHY WRITE?
For the present...
A: To record life, scenes, perspectives; the search and capture of places, images, moments (sights seen)
A: To express self (feelings felt, ponderings, revelations, passions, ecstasies large and small)
A: To flush a full mind
A: To communicate, with self and the world To increase awareness, eye for beauty surrounding – both large and small; and the processing of resulting awareness
A: To process cultural adaptation (life on life’s terms, far away from home)
For the future...
A: To look back (to have something to look back on) on the movie, the book of your life – an account of your days
A: To relive memories
A: To note progress
A: To identify with each new adventure, that you have been here (these feelings, this “foreigness”) before
Q: WHY TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS?
A: "A picture is worth a thousand words” (We'll see!)
A: To tangibly hold on longer to places, faces, and sights seen
A: To make it easier to share with people (people like pictures!)
A: To increase awareness, eye for beauty surrounding – both large and small
A: To remind one that the current place is worthy of pictures, worthy of remembering
Q: WHY TRAVEL?
A: To see, hear, taste, smell, feel new things
A: To "see what you’re made of" (life skills in action)
A: To build adaptation skills, patience, acceptance, tolerance
A: To make world larger by increasing range, scope, vision of soul (as part of vast world and universe)
A: To make world smaller, more tangible by going out into it, reaching out and touching it
A: To enter into the needed zone of disequilibria – the space between the known and the unknown where learning occurs
A: To facilitate and excite the accumulation of memories
PROBLEM
#1: Imagination/memory (writing) vs. reality (photographs)
#2 : So much time with one eye closed, the other peeking through a small hole, that one seems to miss the big picture. Are all the little parts truly equal to the sum of what is all around?
#3: Photographer risks falling into groove of a mere tourist detached from subject, place, self
David Overturf
Barcelona, Spain
2002