First of all, WOO HOO! Yesterday I got a new record number of views thanks to to this link from The Guardian after I posted a comment on the TGV speed record there. I hope some of you like what you see and keep reading and I hope even more of you come and join on me on the thrilling international adventure that is TRAIN SELFTAKE.
Combining flickr, global travel, self-portraiture and phenomenal amounts of pretension, Train Selftake is a veritable critical mass of user-generated ferrovial vanity — and also a lot of fun. Whether your backdrop is stunning countryside, industrial wasteland, or even some charmingly retro carriage interiors, I’ve seen some great photos taken this way on a wide variety of trains all over the world, not to mention some very witty ones:
Here’s the official blurb from the group, which I wrote with my tongue firmly in my cheek:
Trains pulled society into the modern world. German unification of 1870. The First World War. The Industrial Revolution. Could they have happened without trains? No. And I’ve got an A in A-level history – so don’t argue.
The midnight train from Paris to Berlin, the Ost-West Express, Le Train Bleu, the Elipsos, the Orient Express… Need I continue? Trains also changed the way we love, our conception of romance, the way we live our lives.
To take a train is not just to journey in the physical sense; every Audenesque click of wheel over rail changes one in some way.
Whether you’re staring out a rain streaked window, alone in a deserted compartment as the IC rushes out of Hamburg HbF, or shielding your eyes against the sun as you clink glasses with friends and begin your picnic in the thronging lunchtime Milan-Venice express, the act of travel changes you.
This metaphysical change is quite independent of the glamour or distance of the journey. You can take a life-altering decision on the RER from CDG to Chatelet, or do nothing more than read a trashy novel all the way from Brussels to Avignon on the TGV Soleil.
The point is, that in the space between A and B, you’re a person in transit on every level. And in the self-obsessed image hungry daylgo bubble of modernity, this change can be captured, taking the moment of introspection into the public domain.
Millions of photons hit millions of sensors and your most intimate etat d’ame, your most powerful resolution to change your life when you alight from this train – and your most fabulous make-up – are there, frozen forever.
The selftake – the taking of the self, if you will – the most sublime moment of Dorian Gray vanity – is as nothing without movement. A selftake at home is teenage angst. A selftake in the bedroom an onanistic exercise in aesthetic self-justification. A selftake on a train, however, combines the public space of the train with the most private type of photograph; movement with stillness; and your face with interesting, often flattering, lighting conditions.
I’m taking the Thalys this afternoon and will let you know if I have any cross-border high-speed canapé related adventures…
2 Comments
April 6, 2007 at 10:39 am
I am honoured!
April 30, 2007 at 9:33 am
is that first guy Barroso? Sure looks like him…