‘However far you travel, no matter how unfamiliar your new environment, there’s one thing you can never leave behind - yourself.’

- Henry Carroll

Joel Pratley about his latest project - Travel Polaroids

Travel photography doesn’t always fit neatly into the category of Documentary, Portrait or Landscape. A good shot has the potential to pull the viewer through the frame, into the image and the very story itself. A source of inspiration, creating a call to action for an opportunity to see what the wisdom of the world has to offer. 

I find beautiful similarities between life’s captivating experiences and those inherent imperfections you see in each polaroid taken, both also in a likeness to recalling a blurred memory or a distant dream. Polaroids are completely born on the spot during that moment with each subject. If it is a portrait, then you can hand it to the person, this is a very real artefact they can hold onto, a tangible gift. Sharing an image in this way is becoming a rarer experience, of one-on-one rather than one-to-the-world.