Round-the-world travel by ship was a fashionable undertaking during the early part of the twentieth century. These trips brought ordinary Americans and Europeans into contact with what were considered at the time to be "exotic" cultures around the globe. What fascinates me is that no matter how planned or controlled these trips were, they spoke to a curiosity to engage with the people and places of unfamiliar cultures -- their arts, their landmarks, their architecture, their food. The travelers of the time, no matter how coddled by tour operators and their planned outings, did choose to engage with a landscape of people and places beyond the comfortable and familiar. Unfortunately, alongside that curiosity, colonialism and exploitation of people and their resources were too often the currency of the day. That exploitation created a landscape of inequality and exploitation that continues to this day to affect the stability of global politics and the economies of a post-colonial developing world.

This collage was made from a collection of memorabilia from one such round-the-world voyage in the 1930s. The postcards and photographs collected on that trip reveal both the best and the worst of how travel can reveal both beauty and inequality -- the beauty of a woman wrapped in coarse, hand-woven cloth and the camel guides in their traditional desert dress contrasted with the comfortable travelers in their buttoned-up suits and hats.