i decided to research the route from haarlem to luxembourg city, last week, in advance of my weekend trip. i wouldn't normally undertake this level of preparation and i find it anathema to my preferred footloose-and-fancy-free-yeah-everybody-cut-everybody-cut style of travel, but given that this was a short vacation i figured i should try to maximise the value.
in the end, i think i was slightly disappointed. having found a number of intermediary destinations along the route, my travels became Boring and Predictable, like i was a tour bus or something. there was no excitement, or surprise, or mysterious unmarked laneways that turned to dirt roads and then to cowpaths with brambles scratching the side of a car that you know you're soon going to have to reverse back up the cowpath because there's no place to turn-around... in order of preference, i like trips where a) you have a wallet full of cash, no luggage, a fun motorcycle or car, and no predefined destinations except for the stores where you will have to buy fresh underwear every (other) day; or b) there is an ultimate destination in mind, but it is far enough away that you can get yourself thoroughly good and lost on the way. i don't like tour-bus rides, i don't like cruise ships, and i don't like being told where i have to be.
still, i *did* manage to drive almost into a barn full of cows on the way back while actively ignoring clive, my gps, in an attempt to throw him into a temper tantrum. and i *did* get to spend 10km following a tractor towing a liquid manure spreader. which was kind of leaking. so the trip wasn't a total waste...
and then there was potentially the best saturday afternoon of my life.
clervaux is a village of 1,810 people nestled in a valley in northern luxembourg - a country of only 480,222 germans, french, dutch and luxembourgeoisie. the country is rather small, about 1/4000th the size of canada, but also about 500 times larger than the vatican, so i guess it's all relative. anyway, clervaux should be on every photographer's must-see-before-i-die list. clervaux is pretty, no doubt, and my picture does not do it justice, but it's not the aesthetic quality of the village that makes it a photographer's dream. no, it is this.
i had never even heard of the "family of man" before, but it was fantastic. here is what you need to know:
- location: 15th century castle, pictured above (the large black box to the bottom-right of the castle was the back of the exhibition stage. for the lumberjack competition that was taking place the same day. ???)
- collection: 503 photographs
- collector: edward steichen (long-time friend of and collaborator with alfred stieglitz)
- timeframe: 1951-1955
- submissions: 2,000,000 photographs from the best photographers of the age
- restoration expert: anne cartier-bresson
- name-drop: magnum, black star, life, national geographic, vogue, brassai, capra, cartier-bresson, miller, nilsson...
yeah, it was a pretty good afternoon.
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