The following interview is by Marty Weil and was posted on his blog, ephemera, on November 17, 2007

Author Barbara Levine Takes Us Around the World

In a recent post, I mentioned Barbara Levine's new book, Around the World: The Grand Tour in Photo Albums. In the following interview, Barbara tells us more about the book, which contains photographs exclusively from her personal collection.

ephemera: How did you come up with the idea for Around the World?

Levine: My first book, Snapshot Chronicles: Inventing the American Photo Album,was about vintage photograph albums of everyday life in the United States. Around the World: The Grand Tour in Photo Albums came about because people tend to make separate photograph albums of their travel experiences. I wanted to make a book focused on the early 1900s when the middle class began to travel with their new Kodak roll film cameras and the photograph albums they made afterward to tell and remember their adventure stories. Also, the fact traveling has changed so much encouraged me to develop the idea for the book. Now, we tend to tolerate getting to our destination; but in those early photographs, you can clearly see getting there was part of the journey and part of the fun of travel.

ephemera: It's a fascinating subject, and one I know a lot of my readers enjoy. What obstacles did you encounter in putting this book together?

Levine: The hardest part about making a book about photograph albums is picking the pages from each album to feature in the book.

ephemera: What were some of your favorite discoveries along the way?

Levine: My favorite discovery was in an album by a woman who traveled for two years from San Francisco to Japan, China, Southeast Asia, Northern Africa, and Europe. In 1924, she visited King Tut’s tomb and took lots of snapshots. I had not noticed until working on the project that on the back of these snapshots she had written notes about what she was seeing. Discovering the notes on the back of the photographs, such as what King Tut’s bed looked like, and the bread he was buried with, transported me to the archaeological site, and I felt like I was right there in the tomb!

ephemera: What did you learn from the experience? Did it give you a new perspective on life?

Levine: Making the book re-enforced my awareness that so much information is being lost in the name of technological convenience. On the one hand, people are taking more pictures than ever before with an amazing variety of devices. On the other hand, those photographs are on hard drives and servers that will become obsolete within our life times. I have a huge appreciation for the information about life and history that vintage anonymous photograph albums impart and I wonder how digital photographs of the times we live in now will be preserved for future generations.

ephemera: Yes, the preservation of digital images and its impact on history is something I've covered in previous posts. Thanks again for telling us about the book. I image a lot of ephemera lovers would like to see this book under the tree come Christmas.