Arranged Cognition

The Story of a Journey “A family album for our planet … what a wonderful, simple idea!” exclaimed my friends, adding (not without a tinge of envy) “and what’s more, you’ll have to go round the world.” 
So, on the hunch that they could well be right, I set off to

- lose my first bet, and find funds and sponsors easily
- buy an indestructible vehicle
- drive nearly 160,000 miles on roads and tracks and across fields all over the world
- sleep in hundreds of hotels and other distinctly less salubrious places
- lose a lot of weight
- break and repair everything that makes a vehicle work (even an indestructible one)
- see my hair turn white
- fight tireless mosquitoes
- get married in Las Vegas
- drive carefully on the left, or the right, or in the middle, as local custom demanded
- treat everything uniformed with kid gloves, in all five continents
- encounter highway bandits and robbers
- make friends
- set infants wailing who aren’t used to “pale-faced” and “long-nosed” strangers
- try to get an elephant to smile
- use up thousands of films of every kind and format
- endure and make countless toasts to everyone’s success and good health
- be suspected of being a thief or child kidnapper on the lookout for future victims
- break down, preferably in places really off the beaten track

- find honest, Mister-Fix-Anything mechanics
- eat a lot and often so as not to turn down invitations
- get stuck for hours and days at borders that wouldn’t budge
- avoid running over cyclists, sheep, dogs and other pedestrians
- swerve round camels, buffaloes and sacred cows
- try not to step on snakes
- try to get somewhere before nightfall
- ask for help from mayors, priests, headmasters, imams and shepherds
- find interpreters and understand them
- learn three words in all sorts of languages and forget them as quickly
- bale out after downpours
- approach families – in the street, in restaurants, in church, in the fields, on beaches and golf courses, by phone, at campsites …
- obtain and extend visas
- get lost in the wilds
- curse road maps
- win over a touchy female buffalo
- regret not snapping fleeting images as they flash by
- promise to come back one day … everywhere!
- be taken aback by the immense hospitality and sincere enthusiasm 
of families taking part in the ‘album’
- get back home safe and sound, four years later
- win my second bet and succeeded in making portraits of 1.251 families. 
On my return, 4 years later, scarcely raising an eyebrow, my friends asked :

“Well, how was your little jaunt ?”
“Oh, fine, no problems, it was just wonderful!”

Come and meet the families at this website !