I just finished an epic journey, down the Nile, in the nick of time.
Time is a relentless accompanist to my world at this point in life. Rather than create another portfolio of images for gallery, museum, or closet, I thought I would take a step back and try to recreate the magic I felt when I discovered the mummies at the Brooklyn Museum and read of Harold Carter opening the tomb of Tutankhamen.
Early memories are an eight-year-old with a flashlight, under a tented blanket reading about the opening of sealed burial chambers. There was no way to capture this magic with a cell phone fighting with a hoard of tourists to document every aspect of a site, museum or tomb. There is a place for a cell, for my Cannon 5D, but I found them best left in a suitcase or at home while I went down the Nile with my Diana and Black and While Ilford 50ASA film.
These are the results, with a few iphone 11 images for comparison. One set may not be “better” than the other, but perhaps the B&W metaphorical images reference the 19th century sense of discovery and there is a place for these in our age of instantaneous gratification. I left the SS Sudan, the 100-year-old side paddle-wheel boat and Egypt on Feb 16, hours before the virus began its own journey on the Nile.
Rather than celebrate a time, perhaps I am simply trying to hold time at bay.