The Past from Above @ The British Museum

Is travel pr0n. Pure and uncut travel crack. I’m not kidding.

Looking at the amazing photos of sacred sites, monuments, temples and places you’ve read about or dreamed of travelling to your entire life merely stokes the fires of the wanderlust that got you to the UK in the first place and makes the soles of your feet itchy to get in planes, trains, ships and automobiles.

Georg Gestner is his 40 years circling the globe taking photos in 111 countries and of some of the most amazing human edifices in the world has generated a remarkable and singular photographic achievement. While lacking the artistic merit of The Earth from Above/La Terre vue du ciel (which the French very, very coolly put up on the outside of the fence around the Jardin du Lexembourg in Paris for everyone to see which was amazing and free to all and still has me gobsmacked in their commitment to art for the sake of the people), the Past somehow gets a deeper under the skin, if less aesthetic, hold on the imagination and has you mentally creating travel lists and checking them against the new found vacation time you suddenly have.

Damn, I’m jonesing for a trip now.

I did make myself feel good by noting the number of places he’d phototgraphed I’d actually been to, which at least kept the jonesing in place a little. Still… so much to see, so little time for serious travel.

Highly recommended if you’ve got time anywhere just before or after the New Year if you’ve got to figure out what those resolutions for 2007 need to be in the adventure and travel categories.