The Occidental Tourist

   Once, on the Kwai Bridge in Thailand - wearing baggy shorts and bush hat - I was stopped by a young Japanese father who asked via sign language for me to pose in a photograph with his family. We put our arms around each other and grinned into the camera lens, gladly erasing, but simultaneously commemorating, a history of past conflict and our fathers' hatred.


Dad & 'Ranga Swami'

I felt bad later that I didn't get a shot of us with my own camera (was this an insult?), but also that I didn't exchange information with him.

You see, I still long to have that photograph to this day!

My father was sent to Burma during the Second World War - the only time he ever left the British Isles. Among other "faraway places", he saw Naples, Gibraltar, Cape Town, Bombay, Madras, Singapore, Puna, and Rangoon.

JAPANESE VERSION

   There are vintage photos of my Dad in India - wearing baggy shorts and bush hat - living what appears to be the best time of his life. (He drove the night parcels van between Manchester, Leicester and Macclesfield for most of the rest of it, and died in 1984, still hating the Japanese.)

A confession: for more than twenty years now, wherever I've travelled, as a sort of ongoing prank, I have been intentionally posing in the background of unsuspecting tourists' snapshots - 'putting myself in the picture' so to speak. The vast majority of these unintended portraits of me are without doubt in Japan - filed away in albums and slide-trays, on videotape and disc. Now, as a form of apology for perhaps ruining some carefully framed vacation shots, I wish to redeem myself...

An invitation: (especially if you are Japanese) please look for me in the background of your vacation images from the last twenty years. If you see me - no matter how small or indistinct - please email me attaching a small digitized copy of your original image with an approximate date and location. If appropriate, I will include your submission along with your details in the web-based exhibition site:

The Occidental Tourist Gallery

 

Graham Budgett

  
 
   
 

Have you seen this man? When loaded, click-drag the 3D mugshot above for all views

...you may need QUICKTIME to view this object - meanwhile read on...