Travel photo book: On foot to the south

Anyone embarking on an extraordinary journey these days and wanting to publish a book about it can't just set off and write. First, they need a motivation that inspires potential readers. Overcoming trauma, self-discovery, or at least the fulfillment of a lifelong dream are pretty good examples. And then, this journey has to be original in some way to have a chance on the book market. At the very least, they should be cycling backward or have some kind of cute animal with them. The audacity of the undertaking is best indicated by a superlative in the book title.

How different the writer and traveler Johann Gottfried Seume was, who quite succinctly and modestly titled the account of his great life's adventure "A Walk to Syracuse in 1802." His starting point was Grimma, south of Leipzig. The distance he covered was more than 2,500 kilometers. Seume walked the vast majority of it. His documentary travel narrative has long been a classic. Thesis: Because it's not so much about him himself, but rather reveals something about the fragmented Europe of that time, amidst a—albeit comparatively calm—phase of the Napoleonic Wars.

Author and photographer Eric Pawlitzky has now followed Seume's footsteps. It wasn't easy: "Postal roads became highways," Pawlitzky writes in the foreword to his exceptionally lovingly designed book, "Seume's Path." And Seume didn't meticulously record his route either. Pawlitzky therefore researched historical routes and consulted contemporary maps, but ultimately had to find his own way. "Nevertheless," he emphasizes, "I actually visited all the stations mentioned by Seume."

Where Seume took a carriage, Pawlitzky took a bus or train, or hitchhiked. From Venice, he, like Seume, traveled by boat across the Brenta River to Padua. The distance is 2,700 kilometers, not including the crossing of the sea from Naples to Palermo, 2,160 of which he walked. Eric Pawlitzky was on the road for 105 days, including several rest days, from the beginning of September to mid-December 2022. He imposed a charming rule on himself for this tour, which served his project very well: Pawlitzky took a photo every five kilometers, regardless of where he was standing.

Around 2,000 photographs were taken this way, and he selected one for each day. His book, "Seume's Way," is dominated by these images. They do not compile the sights along the route. Pawlitzky refers to the principle of the democratic view formulated by William Eggleston: photographs of architecturally questionable suburbs stand on equal footing with those of rainy landscapes, and industrial areas alternate as motifs with bucolic landscapes.

Each photograph is accompanied by a short text: poems, critical comments, and reflections on what was seen and experienced. The first entry immediately poses the question of meaning: "You asked why I'm doing this. Because I can only know who I am if I push myself to my limits... Because I want to be everything I could be."

Eric Pawlitzky uses poetic, highly vivid, and imagery-rich language: On the Semmerin Pass, he finds "the bus parking spaces yawning empty," a "greasy waiter slobbering schnitzel onto the table." Already in Bohemia, he first thinks of the sea, because the smell of rotting cabbage reminds him of seaweed. But history is also inscribed in the landscape, especially the wars that have been fought here since Johann Gottfried Seume passed through these lands. This is especially true in the area of the Isonzo River, known in Slovenia as the Soča, which was fiercely fought over during the First World War.

In some places, the crucial elements have not changed; both Seume and Pawlitzky presumably found the Via Appia south of Rome in a similar state. Elsewhere, Seume wouldn't recognize anything if he were traveling today. The book explores these continuities on the one hand, as well as ruptures and changes on the other.

"Seume's Path" is designed like a facsimile. Eric Pawlitzky first pasted the selected images into a handmade, empty book, then began writing texts, tore out the slips of paper they were written on, and pasted in new ones. This aesthetic is preserved in the printed work. The photographs, inspired by the colorfulness of late Romantic painting, and the texts typed on a mechanical typewriter appear pasted in. Discarded, erased pencil notes can be sensed; where pasted-in items damaged the paper when removed, the damage can still be seen. "Seume's Path" is not a polished illustrated book, but rather the sum of diverse observations. "I saw," writes Pawlitzky, "an extremely vibrant Europe off the beaten track." Even though his path took him through Vienna, Venice, Rome, and Palermo.

In Venice, Pawlitzky sympathizes with the shell game: "I envy you. You always win money with the greed of the ignorant. Finally, stupidity costs money." The Europe he travels through has rough edges, sometimes even chasms. It occasionally unsettles the author. But very often also inspiring, endearing, pleasantly complex. Eric Pawlitzky believes in the continent, in a sense of togetherness, more than ever after this journey. At the end, he asks, somewhat coquettishly, "May I call myself a European now?" He has provided the proof himself.

Eric Pawlitzky : Seume's Way. Lunik Verlag, Berlin 2025. 200 pages, 38 euros.