Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly turns out to have been a photographer for most of the Seventies wandering around Asia. A while ago he self-published Asia Grace, a book that distilled his personal choice from the thousands of photos he took into one wordless collection. The book is nothing but photos, with no context, captions or anything else.
Now Kelly has launched the book online through the very clever Asia Grace site, where you can view each photo. Not only is each one captioned, but Kelly invites site visitors to contribute their own comments to help explain the picture. It’s a beautifully elegant idea well executed, and it also points to the often unspoken fact that travellers rarely know anything about the significance of what they’re seeing. I don’t say this as criticism but as observation. I find that travelling is quite overwhelming and much of what’s encountered is only understood in retrospect. Of course, without travelling, the stimulus and impetus to find out about the strange and wonderful things you encounter wouldn’t be ignited to begin with.
Kelly’s someone for who I have a lot of respect – reading his biography is like a who’s who of clever ideas – so to find out he’s done this too is quite gobsmacking. In a previous life, I reviewed his last book New Rules For the New Economy for the Daily Telegraph.
[Thanks to Written Road for the Kelly heads-up.]
Besides Asia Grace, there’s also a great photography site that’s just gone up from Ekapon Krobtong, a web designer and graphic artist that lives on the Thai island of Koh Tao. (It’s where I did my Scuba Instructor course last year). Ekapon has caught some great moments and people on this tiny little island that still remains relatively unspoilt by tourism – and certainly a mecca for scuba divers.
More ontravel photos:
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