Forty years ago, after getting married and before bringing myself and my younger brother into this world, my mother and father spent 12 months travelling the seven seas. Putting their respective professional careers on hold, they set off on a singular honeymoon experience, one intended to broaden their horizons and elevate their understandings. So in honour of their recent Ruby Anniversary, let’s look at some of the recently digitised Kodachrome highlights from their otherworldly time abroad. The year was 1984…
Indeed, the world was a dramatically different place before the Internet; before the barbaric ego and over-inflated sense of self held such pride of place in our individual memories. One indication of this is seen in the relative dearth of “selfies” or even photographs of each other that my parents took (think 1 in 100 instead of the current 1 in 2). Contrasted with the more contemporary exploitation of globally photogenic landmarks now used to place, even impose, oneself in another’s context and then to leverage the shit out of it to incite envy in “friends” back home, these photographs were rather a way of seeing the world; a faster and more convenient way of painting or sketching, but intended to convey the very same spirit of observation as a cultural outsider.
Is there any going back? Or is this just an too-small sample size and just-so narrative to begin with?