About

GustavEnquist.com started as a mere collection of travel photographs - passing views, snapshots and portraits from journeys in various parts of the world, mainly analogue black-and-whites with a subsequent increase of color and digital shots. My aspiration has been to stay as true as possible to the subject of the image as well as the moment and location in which it was found, allowing for a minimum of alteration or editing.  Some views are shot using professional equipment, others not. All GustavEnquist.com images are analogue or digital single photographs taken from anno 2000 to date and are the sole property of Gustav Enquist.

 

The writings of GustavEnquist.com are comments, progenies of and tributaries to its images and their origins. In search of what spurs our interest in a destination, it is a set of chronicles with a view to highlight and make sense of places and what connects them to each other as well as to ourselves. It offers a lofty take on the art of traveling and how it can make us conscious of what we see and what we do.

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Whether traveling for pleasure or work, I find myself on a quest for information and inspiration. Helpful as the findings are, they can impose a distance, false expectations, intrusive guidelines and other hindrances to our experience. GustavEnquist.com is an answer and a complement to the current stream of advice; a subjective reflection on places and time in search of historical resonance and cultural bearings.    

 

The raw materials at work are snapshots and notes gathered along the way - the residue of presence and movement, scribbled reflections and views collected over the years. They emanate from the bustling cacophony and bright colors of old market squares from Marrakech to Beijing, from the medieval echoes sweeping through Gothic cathedrals, the wild scents of the African savanna, rumbling volcanoes and the majestic melancholy flow of the Mississippi - brief moments that take place every day, yet leaving the passing beholder with a unique and lasting impression.

 

From the foggy ruins of time to the transient buzz of the present, places we visit are merely the momentary culmination of events that have led up to now, ever negotiable realities and history in progress, property of all who care to consider them. Some of the ideas we hold as true last many lifetimes, while others will change tomorrow. Realities come and go, walls are built and torn down, borders redrawn. Big words are spoken and sumptuous monuments erected as if to defy the laws of impermanence and make us believe in the everlasting, though nothing seems to be just that.

 

The present lies hidden in details and our own sensitivity to them. The distinctive typeface of a road sign, shifting smells and temperatures, writings on a wall, foreign words ringing out in the streets and eyes meeting in passing: these are promises of an intriguingly plural reality, coexisting in the present tense.

 

Our planet tells its story through the shapes of nature, the lay of the land and the way of the waters. Its diary is printed in landscape and archeology, in our cities and the petrified music of architecture as well as in our own features. We never actually see any of this of course, only the light reflected by objects, though experiencing them makes us part of a bigger picture and the web of trails that make up our own story. We may catch a glimpse of the greater context and widen our view of the world by occasionally narrowing it down for closer examination. To follow the annual intercontinental migration of birds, nurturing a collection of memorabilia, meditating, learning a language or tracking down the geological age of a stone, all have the potential of revelatory insights. By means of a part, we get a grasp of the whole.  

 

At GustavEnquist.com, travel is the recurring theme at hand. It is a kind of slow moving ledger, grasping for the bigger picture rather than the latest trends. It is set on a quest for what ultimately makes a destination interesting to us, why to go somewhere or why not to. Without denying the pleasures of idling away on the beach without a care in the world, it offers an alternative to the beaten concept of grand scale tourism and seeks to reclaim the experience of travel on behalf of the reflecting individual and the delight of discovery.

 

It comes down to place and time, shadow and light, strict logic and wild imagination. Everything we see is set in a perpetual state of decline or build-up, more or less fluid at shifting speed; Continental drift thrusts the Himalayan mountain range upwards by about five millimeters every year, South America floats further away from Africa and previously unknown sights are constantly being extracted like relics of past civilizations for us to see. Pompeii spent about 1700 years underground before being excavated, and the 15th century Inca city of Machu Picchu - today a major backpacker destination - was only rediscovered a hundred years ago. What else will we find out there?

 

Our glaciers are constantly moving, and - worryingly enough - diminishing. Rivers change their course over long stretches of time and every year something spectacularly new will be displayed at the galleries and fashion shows from Jerusalem to Los Angeles - the former about 3500 years older than the latter, yet some look to both as their home and today we can travel between the cities within sixteen hours. We fly, navigate, float and change. Most cells in our bodies are replaced at varying intervals during the course of our lifetime, futuristic art from a century ago can be viewed with nostalgia today. And so on. Things change, yet the planet at our disposal is one and the same.

 

Time appears to be moving at varying speed in different places, like winds or a draft whirling in a passageway, only to calm down as soon as we turn the corner into the street. Some places move on furiously into modern age, while others seem to stand still through centuries. What brings them to life is the human presence that runs through the filter of passing moments, our interaction and efforts to make out an order in which to fit ourselves. From the Paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux in France to the ubiquitous selfie stick, we attempt to immortalize ourselves, to put ourselves on the map and claim that we were here. GustavEnquist.com is an expression of the same endeavor: a few pictures and their stories, gathered for the sake of bringing order into a busy travel schedule.   

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