Travellers' Tales Part II

Last week, following my visit to The Royal Geographical Society, I wrote about the changing face of contemporary travel writing. Reporting from the Travellers’ Tales Festival, I described some of the soul-stirring lectures I attended.


Next on my itinerary that Sunday was a workshop about the merits of digital photography. You’ll probably already picked up from these blogs that, here at Millican headquarters, we’re not unthinking fans of all things digital. We reserve a special place in our heart for humble analog tools like the Moleskine notebook, pencil, and the human foot.

Having said that, the workshop about old school versus new school photography was totally fascinating, provoking loads of questions.

For example, is photography simply a recording activity or an art form that manipulates reality?

Easy to argue for the former but, in fact, one makes a whole host of choices about how to frame a photo, what to position in the foreground or background, and so on. As politically radical film director Jean-Luc Godard once said, every camera position is a political decision.

Of course, there are tremendous beauty and integrity in the manual elements of developing analog photos, a wonderful romance to the darkroom. However, digital photography is clearly here to stay, all the more so now as new technology promises increased combination of still and moving recording technologies within a single camera. Surely whether photography tilts more towards the documentary recording or towards an art form will continue to depend much on the photographer?

I just wish that my modestly priced digital camera didn’t have such a dreadful time lag between button pressing and recording. I’m not exactly on my way to winning any split-second news reporting photo competitions.

Back into the RGS lecture theatre for travel writer, Chris Stewart. After tales of war-devastated Africa and Afghanistan from previous speakers, it was something of a relief to hear from this sheep-shearer who moved to Spain and fell into travel writing. Chris writes all his stories with pen and paper first so that he can keep track with his thoughts.

Chris Stewart

Passionate about land, writing, and simplicity and community, he is also a very funny man. I loved his description of the health and safety warnings now issued on British gravestones to protect passers-by from tripping over our loved ones’ last resting places them. “They are dead, for God’s sake”, remarked Chris drily. To him, these warning labels are the ultimate sign of a nanny state.

Topping the bill and last up was legendary war photographer Don McCullin. Now in his 70’s, McCullin has been lauded for his war coverage over the last few decades. So it was interesting to hear just how profoundly disillusioned he is about how he has made a living and the fact that he has won numerous awards on the back of human suffering.

Don McCullin

I suppose that it’s inevitable that if you’re a campaigning photographer exposing the horrors of war and you don’t see your work altering political reality, you’re bound to question what you do. However, it seemed to me that McCullin cannot discount the incredible impact of his work on many of us who are otherwise shielded from the cruel facts of human conflict.

Although he talked with enthusiasm about his latest project to record the frontiers of the ancient Roman empire, I remain more haunted by his accounts of his war-torn work. And I find myself similarly compelled by his original, adrenaline-charged photos of conflict rather than his striking images of Roman ruins from across Europe.

Photo of Roman Forum "Temple of Saturn" courtesy of David Paul Ohmer

What the festival brought home to me is the importance of increasing our understanding and empathy for fellow human beings and cultures across the world.

This surely is what travel writing is all about at its finest.

Goodness knows, in our insulated consumerist lives, it’s easy to live comfortably within our existing boundaries and to fail to empathize with people in very different stations of life and different cultures. For me, McCullin’s work remains profoundly important because it allows us a window into the lives of others, not merely the innocent victims of war but also the men and women involved in combat.

When I fall back on knee-jerk assumptions about such people and issues, it’s good to look into the haunted eyes of one of McCullin’s subjects and be transported to another level of involvement with the subject.