Making the Past Live in Words and Images
"This is the perfect browsing book. As in his previous books of photographs, Wilson's photographs are always very good. Some are well-done but conventional shots of well-known places (the Taj Mahal, the Capitol Building in Washington, DC); many more are original and engaging images of places that most of us will be unfamiliar with. And in many cases Wilson has included substantial captions that provide a wealth of background detail, relating (to pick just a few examples) a fascinating story of two survivors of a shipwreck off the Australian coast; the back story of the Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur; the story of "the dying town" in Italy; the story of of what happened on July 1, 1916 at the first battle of the Somme; the story of Gerda Taro and her "unconditional struggle for a better world"; and the story of the rebuilding of the Cloth Hall at Ypres. This book would make a great gift for anyone with an interest in history and geography as well as in fine photography." Don LePan
In five decades of travelling and storytelling, John Wilson has visited more than 30 countries and every continent except Antarctica. At first he took amateur snapshots on an assortment of old cameras. As time passed, his skills improved and when he became a full-time Freelance Writer, he began selling photographs to accompany his articles and as stand-alone Photo Essays to an assortment of glossy magazines. As his career morphed into writing fiction and non-fiction, his focus narrowed to words, but he never lost his love of image. As the publishing industry changed and some of his 50 titles became available for reprinting, he began designing covers for his new editions and including illustrations where appropriate. This led to his well-received trilogy of photography books, Places not Paisley: Photographic Peregrinations, The Natural World, The Human World and The Ruined World. Then came the idea for STEPS—why not imagine a life of travelling as a single journey around the world. STEPS: Around the World in 50 Years and 500 Images is John's imagined journey.
"This may well be the best of Wilson's several fine photography books--on the basis not only of the fine photographs themselves but also of the extended captions, which are wonderfully informative in all sorts of ways. The book as a whole gives a great sense of the beauty of ruins, and a great sense of the history of the civilizations behind them. Wilson is a first-rate writer—and a first-rate photographer too." Don LePan
Whether you are looking at the sagging, moss-covered ruin of an Oregon ghost town, a majestic stepped temple rising above the Mexican jungle, or the colossal fallen columns of a Greek temple, you are looking at a story written by people just like yourself. The tale may be fragmentary and only guessed at, or it may have been recorded in detail by those who lived through it, or your imagination may be all that is left. The ruins you observe may be near complete or an unremarkable pile of weathered stone. You may be able to walk the halls of long-dead Kings and Emperors or you may only be able to wonder at the lost majesty of a vanished culture that is little more than myth. Whatever the case, you become a traveller in time to the antique lands that produced what you see. Travels in Antique Lands shows something of the magical places I have visited and tells a few anecdotes from the tales they hide.
