It’s back to school time again, with all of the portent of wonderful books yet unread, brilliant lectures yet unheard.  It also means, of course, that summer vacation is over.  We still have our memories of the summer’s travels, and the photographs.  It’s interesting to see how different holiday destinations can affect what we photograph, and how we visually record the journey.  Even return visits to familiar places can elicit different responses from year to year, once we’re behind the camera.  Here’s a little slideshow of some of the spots our department visited this past summer:

Judging by the exciting exhibition currently on view at the Yale Center for British Art, Bruce Davidson/Paul Caponigro: Two American Photographers in Britain and Ireland, the British Isles offered boundless photographic inspiration to these two artists.  The photographs in the exhibition were taken over repeated visits in the 1960s and 1970s, and though neither artist traveled with an explicit agenda to capture on film something in particular, Bruce Davidson’s photos demonstrate his persistent interest in the beauty and idiosyncrasy of the people he encountered there, while Paul Caponigro’s haunting images of the landscape reveal his enduring attraction to the nature of Britain and Ireland.

Where did you travel this summer, and what did that place motivate you to photograph?  Would you send us a photo from your travels?  We would love to send the first two respondents a copy of the stunning exhibition catalogue Bruce Davidson/Paul Caponigro: Two American Photographers in Britain and Ireland. Email your vacation photo submission to yaleartbooks@gmail.com*.

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