For my father who has always criticized me for not writing.

"Write the great travel adventure. Paul ...”

“Make some money writing a travel book ...”

“How many people have taken their children to where you have, people want to read about this ..."

And the like.

My retort was always, “dad I am an artist, the travels eventually appear in photos or paintings.”

To which he would resort "bah" and most recently, the sensitive father that he is, "pictures don't say anything, you need words!" (Based on the number of paintings I have sold he is empirically right)

My Dad brought himself up on great travel narratives.  Edgar Snow who visited Mao and Gandhi in China and India, the writer who traveled to the Caucasus in Russia in the 1930's and fights with Tito in Yugoslavia, and Skorzeny the great German adventurer. In his mind these books lit up his own sense of adventure, they may have been the reason for his quest to leave Germany and explore Africa in the immediate post war world. 

So here it goes, words. I have made some small attempts at recording travels.  I made some small books "Annapurna" and "All the Rooms..." these being just photographs bound together thematically.  I also made a book of images of people more or less at work.  Beaten to it by Salgado and Burtinsky I still recorded my same fascination with the patterns of life in a small book titled (creatively ) "Asia."  But these were furtive attempts, Here I will actually use them, words.

Typically words elude me. I will obfuscate and certainly correct them. According to a recent student I also abuse them.  So to actually construct words is intimidating.   Construction is a difficult task. constant tinkering is needed and required. I probably lack the discipline for it. Luckily an on-line audience demands less of them, words.