Voyage of Illusions: Turning Travel Into Graphic Storytelling
Updated: Sep 15
What if a photograph was only the beginning of the story? That question is at the heart of Voyage of Illusions, a new creative direction for me that brings together travel, photography, writing, history, and imagination. For years, I have traveled with a camera, documenting remarkable places, unforgettable people, cruise adventures, quiet moments, and unexpected discoveries. Those photographs preserve what I actually saw, but increasingly I find myself looking at an image and wondering what might have happened next—or what could have happened if imagination had been allowed to take over. Voyage of Illusions begins at that exact point, where the real journey ends and another one begins.
A photograph of Venice can become the opening scene of a mystery along a darkened canal. A sidewalk café in Paris can turn into the headquarters of two Americans who suddenly believe they are international detectives. An ancient Scottish castle can become the setting for an argument over whether the noises upstairs are ghosts or simply very bad plumbing. A cruise ship crossing the Atlantic can become its own world of characters, adventures, friendships, and possibilities. The locations may be real and many of the experiences may begin with something that actually happened, but graphic storytelling gives me permission to push beyond the photograph. I can exaggerate, invent, laugh, remember, and ask that wonderful question: What if?
That is what makes this project especially exciting to me. I already have thousands of photographs from years of traveling across the United States and around the world. Rather than allowing them to remain quietly stored in a digital library, I can use them as raw material for something entirely new. One photograph can inspire a character. A character can inspire a story. That story can become an illustrated scene, and eventually those scenes can grow into a larger graphic adventure. Some stories will be humorous and completely outrageous. Others will explore history, friendship, courage, aging, memory, discovery, and the extraordinary privilege of continuing to see the world. I am not trying to reproduce reality exactly. I am taking reality and giving it another life.
Voyage of Illusions is also part of a much larger personal adventure. Retirement, for me, was never supposed to mean slowing down and watching life from the sidelines. It became an opportunity to travel farther, study photography, write more, experiment with new technology, and continue discovering what I might create next. Photography records where I have been. Writing helps me understand the experience. Graphic storytelling allows me to imagine where the journey might go next. I invite you to follow along as photographs become stories, real destinations become imaginary adventures, and familiar travelers occasionally find themselves in situations they never expected. The passport may show where the journey began, but in Voyage of Illusions, imagination decides where it ends.
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