Capturing Senses - A European Adventure

      

Cards and matching website were developed.

Traveling through Europe during the summer of 2010, seeing so many landmark and historical locations, I felt it was important to document my travels in a way that others could experience these places through my eyes. To me, being in all these remarkable locations was way more than the typical historical mumbo jumbo, it was about the things I felt, the people I met, the food I ate and the fun I experienced. All the photos were taken as to not give you the typical view of these sites, rather a glimpse of how I interpreted them, sometimes even while laying on the ground.

While creating my collection I knew it should include a historical reference that would invoke that “safe” feeling; that gave it a recognizable quality. I gave them a twist however, while I took a nod at photo history and came to the conclusion the best way to envision this was to create my own version of travel cards. The collection was inspired by the Carte de visite, which was first introduced as albumen prints in Paris, France in the mid-1800s. These photograph cards were extremely popular and started to be traded among friends and family. The popularity, like any of our modern day fads, led to mass publication and collection by prominent people. It became common for people to have albums of these display cards as a fixture in their Victorian parlors. Cards like this stayed popular until the price fell and feasibility to take your own photographs became possible with the introduction of the Brownie camera by Kodak in the early 20th century.


I took this deep-rooted history, and gave the cards a modern flavor. I took the sepia tones of the albumen print and gave it an undertone throughout my pieces. On the back of the cards rather than giving information about the place that seems regurgitated from text books, wikipedia and tourist info sheets, I wrote about my personal experience with the place and how I felt there. For being there is much more than facts and figures, it’s the way it impacts all your senses. Capturing that through an image is what makes it magical.