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Around the World

By Barbara Levine, Kirsten Jensen in Galleries —

When your cousin can upload 400 pictures from her Tahitian vacation but not find time to whittle them down, do you care too much about her journey?

Around the World

Barbara Levine and Kirsten Jensen’s new book, Around the World: The Grand Tour in Photo Albums takes us back to when travel albums possessed depth instead of breadth, reflections rather than refractions.

The pictures selected for this gallery are from Chicagoan Clara E. Whitcomb’s diary, written around the turn of the century during her travels in Egypt. All images used with permission, © copyright the artist, all rights reserved.

“Clara selected this small, but probably expensive, leather-bound diary with its floral endpapers and pages of thick, white, coated paper to record her journey.”
Clara selected this small, but probably expensive, leather-bound diary with its floral endpapers and pages of thick, white, coated paper to record her journey.
“Although Clara mentions having her photograph taken at various sites, she doesn’t include them. All the photographs in her album are purchased souvenir views, the kind that any tourist in Egypt could have bought at a hotel, print shop, or from one of her many guides. She captioned each in a neat script, weaving together facts and informative quotes from guidebooks with descriptions of her own experiences and her opinions of what the pictures depict. It is an exotic assemblage. The majority of the photographs are of native people—Bedouins, shopkeepers, veiled women carrying children or jars of water. Clara, who seems both fascinated and repulsed by what she saw, recorded every nuance of her experience, describing in detail what people looked like, how they acted. These descriptions, in conjunction with her frank opinions concerning hygiene and the behavior of the native people she encountered, make her diary as much a revelation of the clash of cultures frequently engendered by foreign travel as it is a record of her journey.”
“Although Clara mentions having her photograph taken at various sites, she doesn’t include them. All the photographs in her album are purchased souvenir views, the kind that any tourist in Egypt could have bought at a hotel, print shop, or from one of her many guides. She captioned each in a neat script, weaving together facts and informative quotes from guidebooks with descriptions of her own experiences and her opinions of what the pictures depict. It is an exotic assemblage. The majority of the photographs are of native people—Bedouins, shopkeepers, veiled women carrying children or jars of water. Clara, who seems both fascinated and repulsed by what she saw, recorded every nuance of her experience, describing in detail what people looked like, how they acted. These descriptions, in conjunction with her frank opinions concerning hygiene and the behavior of the native people she encountered, make her diary as much a revelation of the clash of cultures frequently engendered by foreign travel as it is a record of her journey.”
“Although Clara mentions having her photograph taken at various sites, she doesn’t include them. All the photographs in her album are purchased souvenir views, the kind that any tourist in Egypt could have bought at a hotel, print shop, or from one of her many guides. She captioned each in a neat script, weaving together facts and informative quotes from guidebooks with descriptions of her own experiences and her opinions of what the pictures depict. It is an exotic assemblage. The majority of the photographs are of native people—Bedouins, shopkeepers, veiled women carrying children or jars of water. Clara, who seems both fascinated and repulsed by what she saw, recorded every nuance of her experience, describing in detail what people looked like, how they acted. These descriptions, in conjunction with her frank opinions concerning hygiene and the behavior of the native people she encountered, make her diary as much a revelation of the clash of cultures frequently engendered by foreign travel as it is a record of her journey.”
Although Clara mentions having her photograph taken at various sites, she doesn’t include them. All the photographs in her album are purchased souvenir views, the kind that any tourist in Egypt could have bought at a hotel, print shop, or from one of her many guides. She captioned each in a neat script, weaving together facts and informative quotes from guidebooks with descriptions of her own experiences and her opinions of what the pictures depict. It is an exotic assemblage. The majority of the photographs are of native people—Bedouins, shopkeepers, veiled women carrying children or jars of water. Clara, who seems both fascinated and repulsed by what she saw, recorded every nuance of her experience, describing in detail what people looked like, how they acted. These descriptions, in conjunction with her frank opinions concerning hygiene and the behavior of the native people she encountered, make her diary as much a revelation of the clash of cultures frequently engendered by foreign travel as it is a record of her journey.
“The area Clara covered in her Egyptian travels can be seen on this map, which she pasted into the back of her diary. Clara’s routes included a trip down the Nile from Cairo to Luxor.”
The area Clara covered in her Egyptian travels can be seen on this map, which she pasted into the back of her diary. Clara’s routes included a trip down the Nile from Cairo to Luxor.
“On page 97 of her diary, Clara pasted a photograph of the Sphinx and Pyramids, writing ‘I drove with Miss Caruthers to see the Sphinx and Pyramids by moonlight.’ She reached the site just as the sun was setting, and her description of the lengthening shadows and the outline of the monument becomes poetic. She wrote in her diary, “Walking rapidly I was just in time to see the last shadows that seemed so pointed and sharply outlined on the bright green fields, most reaching to the banks of the Nile that are five or six miles away.’“
On page 97 of her diary, Clara pasted a photograph of the Sphinx and Pyramids, writing ‘I drove with Miss Caruthers to see the Sphinx and Pyramids by moonlight.’ She reached the site just as the sun was setting, and her description of the lengthening shadows and the outline of the monument becomes poetic. She wrote in her diary, “Walking rapidly I was just in time to see the last shadows that seemed so pointed and sharply outlined on the bright green fields, most reaching to the banks of the Nile that are five or six miles away.”

Interview with Barbara Levine by Rosecrans Baldwin

When did your interest in travel albums begin?

I started collecting photograph albums in 1982. I am interested in how people record memories and tell their personal stories in photograph albums. In my collection I have photograph albums showing all facets of people’s lives. Around the World: The Grand Tour in Photo Albums focuses on travel albums made between 1883–1929.

What’s the oldest you’ve found?

The oldest travel album I have is from 1883. It is the story of a couple’s trip from New York to Ireland, Scotland and England. The album they used is a Victorian Scrapbook and they filled it with ship menus, hotel receipts, and albumen photographs.

Around the turn of the century, what sort of cameras were travelers using?

In 1900, the most popular cameras were Kodak’s Brownie and Autographic cameras. The Monroe Vest Pocket camera was also popular.

How popular was travel as a leisure activity when the camera was invented?

It may be only coincidence that Thomas Cook’s first organized tour occurred only three years after the invention of photography in 1839.

Around the World tells the story of travel albums at a specific moment in time, approximately 1880–1930, a period that saw a rapid rise in tourism, changes in modes of transportation and communication, and the invention of the personal camera. George Eastman introduced the first roll film camera in 1888. The Kodak Camera was a small box camera that came pre-loaded with a 100-exposure film roll; when the roll of film was completed, all you had to do was send the entire apparatus back to Kodak where your film would be developed, new film would be loaded, and everything would be returned to you.

By 1900, Thomas Cook & Son offered around-the-world excursions, there were popular travel guides such as the Baedeker series and Murray’s Handbook, and the Kodak Brownie camera could be purchased for $1.00. Photography and travel as leisure activities were hugely popular and forever intertwined.

Given the ease and popularity of Snapfish and Flickr, do people today taking the same care to document their voyages?

The impulse to document and tell a story of travel experiences today is the same but the tools are now very different. You can simultaneously experience, record, and email your friends about what you are seeing.

Generally speaking we are no longer making material albums that have a long shelf life. We are making albums which are less intimate to view and on small screens or projected on to television sets. If we look together we are crowded around a screen. More importantly, we are making online albums or storing lots of photos on hard drives and servers which will more than likely become obsolete in the near future. I think people are taking the same care to tell the story of their travels but are not thinking about what will become of their travel story in the future. In other words, they are not taking the same care to ensure their memories and experiences of what they saw will be available for future generations.