PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS: Around the World
AROUND THE WORLD: The Grand Tour in Photo Albums Barbara Levine and Kristen M. Jensen. Princeton Architectural Press, New York. 2007.
Around the World
The Grand Tour in Photo Albums
The Grand Tour in Photo Albums
Barbara Levine and Kristen M. Jensen
Princeton Architectural Press, New York
2007
The beauty of the photo albums presented in “Snapshot Chronicles” continued with “Around the World,” a look at Barbara Levine’s terrific collection of travel albums and scrapbooks from the dawn of the contemporary tourist.
“Around the World” examines ten gorgeous albums from 1883 through 1929, arranged in chronological order. The journeys include massive global excursions, rugged adventures down the Nile, and early automobile vacations. Each traveller collected ephemera from the journey — picture postcards, maps, clippings — as well as a wealth of personal photographs. How these souvenirs were displayed is part of this book’s charm.
Between each chapter are gold-colored “Gazette” pages which illuminate specific topics of interest, like “lodging,” “currency,” and “ship lore.”
A number of grand monuments seemed to be required viewing for the well-travelled. Spreads reveling in Egypt’s pyramids and France’s Eiffel Tower bind together a collection of views. To complement the intersecting views that thread throughout the albums, I connected a series of shipboard views of the distant horizon.
