CAMS Roadtrip ’09 – Five Year Lookback

Five years ago this spring, I was tiptoeing onto what turned out to be the trailhead of a path I’m still on as a traveler and photographer. At the risk of waxing nostalgic: it was clear to me immediately following the 10-week “roadtrip” that the program would have a profound impact on the direction of my studies and interests. With five years of hindsight, I’ve realized that I simply would not be where I am today without this formative study-abroad experience.

In reflecting on this milestone, I looked back on some of the 10,000 photos I captured during time I spent lost and found in New York City, Rome, around Austria, Prague and the Czech Republic. Firstly, I will note that 10,000 is more than twice the number of images I took during a similar time frame for Walking Walls. Secondly, although most of these photos are terrible, the improvements between 0 and 10,000 were impressively gigantic, which came as a nice surprise. I also “rediscovered” a number of previously unedited images that I really liked. It was fun to unearth these from the depths of my hard drive, but the real excitement came from reflecting on the moment of capture, appreciating the forces that brought me to that point, and what small wisdom has followed me since.

I’m hoping my fellow roadtrippers might share some of their hindsights and hard drive discoveries over the next two months as well. Here’s a small sampling of mine:

Into the Lion’s Den: London, Colonialism, and Walking Walls

One year ago today, I ended my journeys in Israel/Palestine, Cyprus, and Northern Ireland by flying to London, the heart of the British Empire which, over the past century, had placed its Midas touch on each of these three sites. Needless to say, I had emerged from my travels with a rather cynical outlook, waylayed slightly for the time being with the exhilaration and relief of finishing the trip and also meeting a very good friend in town.

As you may have noticed over the past week or so, my posting frequency fell off dramatically, reflecting the way that Walking Walls wound down. The truth is that 5 weeks was entirely too long to spend in Northern Ireland–more than enough to get the content I was looking for, and not enough to get more deeply engaged. So the extra time sagged and was spent on post-processing the 4000+ photos I had accumulated (still a work in progress).

Also, while it was a massive relief to be in an (mostly) English speaking place again, after a while I realized that I had responded by not engaging the environment the same way that I did in I/P and Cyprus where I was forced to be hyper-aware and rely on context clues to navigate space. Belfast was almost too comfortable, and I didn’t adjust accordingly.

But more than any of those excuses, I was simply grateful to be finished with the travel, which had finally become more exhausting than exciting in the last leg of the 90 day adventure, especially as my budget and the British pound caught up with me.

After the trip when people would ask what I learned, I developed a half-joking short answer response to the tune of “religion and the British ruined everything.” But at its historical roots, Walking Walls is a story about Colonialism and conquest, and how the victors demonstrate and enforce their control over space. When you think about it this way, it makes a lot of sense that walls and fences are the solution of choice in Israel/Palestine, Cyprus, and Northern Ireland; an ancient remedy for an ancient practice of domination. And so although my visit was recreational, it was indeed fitting that I visited London, the lion’s den, at the end of this adventure.

I anticipate that I will be posting further reflections on the trip after I have a chance to synthesize the mad writings from the past 90 days. I feel that the process of reliving moments from the trip one day at a time has been an invaluable springboard into the next phase of intensive work on the book.

I’m very grateful that I had the opportunity to undertake this project last year, and am pleased that I had the chance to revisit such a powerful time in my life with this series of reflections. I hope they have been interesting to read as well, I have certainly enjoyed sharing them.

Marking turf

It’s possible I’ve posted this picture here before, because it’s one of my absolute favorites from the trip. Hiking up to the Mourne Wall this day last year was a good reminder that wall-building is a very old practice, undertaken for any number of reasons, almost an instinctive, territorial urge. Because of this, it is at once completely understandable and extremely strange that we are using this old technique for 21st century conflicts.

How to photograph a wall

One of the main reasons that I am obsessed with political partition is because it is incredibly visual. Walls are extremely simple, easy to communicate, and read well as images. One of the challenges of Walking Walls was trying to make barriers look interesting and different after photographing them for 3 months straight. I remember thinking that I was grasping for ideas when I lay down in the wet grass to take this picture in Portadown one year ago today.

In like a lion, out like a lamb

This time last year, I was back in Dublin after a week of roughing it in rural Ireland. The amenities of the city were a welcome change, and the weather was finally cooperating. I was set to go back to Belfast the next morning for one more week of Walking Walls. At this point, the project was winding down and I was spending lots of time editing and writing and thinking, and less time pounding pavement and meeting people. I still had a substantial punch list for the last week in the North, but by now, my travels felt like they had more to do with killing time and pinching pennies than the intense pace I set at the beginning.

Last light before the cold

I shot this picture from the unheated, uninsulated trailer that was our home in rural Ireland on this night one year ago, as temperatures fell into the 30s and flurries of snow whipped through the sky. I was counting down the days before the hot shower and clean bed that awaited in Dublin.

The unforgettable fire

No, this fire is not from the streets of Belfast, but instead a mysterious scene from the window of a small trailer in rural Ireland. I glimpsed the eager flame when I looked up from our non-functional sink, through the thin, plastic window and across darkened farm fields and low hedges. I called for my girlfriend to look and she slipped her arm around my waist for warmth as much as comfort and agreed that we could not know what caused the fire to burn.

At this time last year, I was 7/8 done with Walking Walls, a little burned out, and in dire need of giving my bank account a rest. My girlfriend had a week of vacation for Easter and so it was quite apparent that the solution to all of these needs and wants was to spend a week together doing a work trade on a farm. So she flew out to Dublin where we met up before catching a train south to beautiful, rolling countryside. We were picked up in a rickety van by an excitable guy with dreadlocks named Phil, one of the homesteaders who drove us the last leg of the journey to his farm.

And so we found ourselves in an uninsulated trailer home with no heat or running water, while the Irish gods of weather seemed unaware that it was supposed to be springtime. Perhaps this explains our magnetic attraction to the distant fire across the fields.

For the next week, my Walking Walls posts will be less frequent, as I wasn’t producing much content for the first week of April. 90 days on the road, it turns out, is quite a long time.

 

Across the sea

I took this picture looking west over the Atlantic, toward home. Portstewart, Northern Ireland was the closest I had been to home in nearly 6 months, and it was still an ocean away.

Open and Shut

We were the last ones through the gate before the Peace Walls in West Belfast were closed for the night at 6pm, one year ago today. I whipped around to watch the custodian shut and bolt the heavy metal doors after crossing over. It is actually someone’s job to open and close the Peace Walls. I wonder what side they are on (if any), whether it matters, and how they feel about their job and its contribution to the everyday drama of division vs. integration.

24 Hours in Transit

March 14, 2012 was split between two different countries, and two vastly different modes of travel. The first, Cyprus: warm, palm trees, airport with wifi, food and drink on the plane, well rested and light. The second: the United Kingdom: cold, poor, tired, dark, hard floor of Heathrow Terminal 1 with no 24-hour places to eat.

My first hours in the UK were rough and tense. The following morning (it doesn’t make sense to distinguish by something so arbitrary as dates in this story) I boarded a flight to Belfast which landed in a dense fog and cold mist. It was a bitter beginning to the last leg of this journey; in my run-down state, I cringed at the industrial streets of Belfast, imagining shadows around corners and in doorways.

My 24 hours in transit between these opposite corners of Europe, shifting focus between the massively different, dividing conflicts in each wasn’t exactly a typical approach to island hopping.