The Junket
jun·ket
ˈjəNGkət/
noun
noun: junket; plural noun: junkets
1. a dish of sweetened and flavoured curds of milk, often served with fruit.
2. informal
an extravagant trip or celebration, in particular one enjoyed by a government official at public expense.
Thanks to Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory XIII (one Italian in cahoots with a Roman) we have a calendar in which in December we all reflect on the past year and think of the future one.
Becasuse I am 74 and many of my younger contemporaries are dying of known and unknown diseases I think a lot about what my friend Abraham Rogatnick used to tell me when he was ailing with arthritis and prostate cancer in his early 80s, “I am not long for this world and I am glad of it.”
I concur and in this coming AT 2017 (Anno Trump) I feel that while I live in the horror and an anticipation of terrible events with that man in charge I find that comfort that soon it will mean nothing to me. I worry a bit about my daughters and granddaughter but at least there is the fact that they live in Canada and perhaps things for them will not be as bad.
I watch those who like me (I wanted to and became one) wish to make money from photography. I am saddened by their shrunken possibility and I would give them the advice that plumbing might be a better profession to pursue.
While not exactly patting myself on the back (I had little to do with that good fortune that came my way) I realize that I lived a time when photography was a legitimate and paying profession. It was a profession fuelled by the money that magazines and newspapers made before their bottom fell out in this 21stcentury. This money enabled these periodicals to second me to exotic locations around the world. The only commitment on my part was that I had to produce useable images. We called some of these trips in which everything was paid for as junkets.
As the 20thcrept towards the 21ststock photography killed the paid trips.
Today (December 16, 2016 I looked into my Yugoslavia files. I went to Yugoslavia for Vancouver Magazine and a few travel magazines with a then prolific travel writer called Gary Marchant. In fact there were just a few places around the world (and it did not include Antarctica as he had been there) where he had not gone for pay. We flew from Toronto, first class (even though Yugoslavia was nominally a communist and thus classless society) in Yugoslavia Airlines. True first class is when you are drinking Champagne before you take off and you are drinking the same when you are landing.
I am enclosing three special photographs here of a lifestyle that did not pass me by. I lived it and I am glad for it.
Gary Marchant took the snap at a ferry in Split that was taking us to Hvar. I remember that it was 8 in the morning and a few minutes before we even left both of us were drinking Heinekens.
The photograph of Tito for me is a warning of what celebrity cult is doing to world leaders and that includes that man down south, Donald Trump.
Originally published at blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com.
