My father as my tour guide

A couple of years ago I found my late father slide archive stored in the basement. Some were taken in the US, some in Africa, some were taken God knows where. Sometimes there was the date the slide was processed, but most often not. There was family, strangers, birds, landscapes... For me, it was diving into someone else’s memories with little to no information, dates, or context. So I started looking, scanning and thinking.

I then learned that, in 1962, aged 20, and with little to no English, my father took the cargo across the Atlantic to Texas for the first time, which is pretty impressive when you think about it (isn’t it?). Of that trip there are lots of photos, a letter, and (unbelievably) even memories of a few people who met him and that I’ve tracked down. Then there were subsequent trips to Texas, the West, the giant Sequoias, the Grand Canyon, California… I can only guess what this must have been like back then. But I’ve decided to make my own trip and go to some of these places, and make my own memories with my father as the tour guide.

I’ll be documenting what it’s like to travel for me now and how I see things now. And if all goes well, I will be posting here every now and then…