Hello and welcome to SethontheRoad.com, a product

of the year of world travels that followed my university

graduation in June of 2001. The story of how this year,

project, and web site came to be is pretty interesting in

itself, so before I shower you with photographs and narrative,

I'll first provide a bit of context, followed by an explanation

of how the site is structured and what you can expect as

you browse its contents.

Why this site is here

XXA little more than a year ago (May, 2001, to be exact), I

was fortunate enough to win a Finley Fellowship through

Eliot House at Harvard University. This fellowship, awarded

each year to two or three graduating seniors in the house, is

meant to facilitate a year of travel abroad and growth,

usually (but not necessarily) through the pursuit of a

specific project. My proposal for the fellowship did include a

project--one (somewhat vague at the time) about the desire

to take landscape photographs while traveling and hopefully

produce a book of my work at the conclusion of my year

abroad. The committee happened to like at least the

inklings of what I had in mind, and so selected me to pursue

my project and travels. Having won the fellowship, I loaded

up my backpack with, amongst other things, two cameras, a

bunch of film (at the start, that is--I eventually switched

entirely to digital), a very thick, very blank journal, and set

off.

XXXMy itinerary was ambitious: two or so months in Europe

followed by three months in South America and then three or

four months in Southeast Asia and India, with each section

punctuated by a brief return to the States--for both an

opportunity to sift through the work I recently produced as

well as a chance to catch up on a bit of rest (traveling can

be pretty tiring!). And in early June of 2001, I set off for

Greece and began my journey.

XXXI wasn't quite sure what to expect, both in the sense of

what photographic theme I'd hone in upon while traveling

and frankly what it would be like to travel so extensively on

my own. Thankfully (and somewhat luckily) I overcame both

concerns with relative ease, and within about a month of my

European travels I had gained confidence as an

independent traveler and had discovered (or more

appropriately stumbled upon) a suitable--and to me quite

fascinating--photographic theme that I would pursue

across four continents and nine months. So if you'll excuse

my indulgence in a bit of art history/theory speak, here's

the trajectory and gist of my photograph project.