For a recent trip to China, I wanted to explore the principle of a journey being more a thought process during travel, rather than the physical movement of time and space.
Knowing
that I have a very well-traveled group of friends, I decided to try an
experiment, which was eventually dubbed "The Wall Project." The idea
behind The Wall Project was simple: Collect souvenirs, trinkets and
currency from as many countries as possible and photograph them on
China's most famous site — the Great Wall. The project would emphasize
the fluidity of global culture, and bring mementoes of travels past — my
own, and those of friends and loved ones, which toyed with the concept
of a journey being more psychological than physical. With the help of Facebook, I was able to collect 17 trinkets, from every corner of the globe. The nations represented were Mexico, Haiti, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Poland, Cambodia, Peru, the Philippines, Ireland, Kenya, India, Equatorial Guinea, Brazil, South Africa, Greece, Thailand and Hong Kong.
Loading everything up into my backpack, we boarded a crowded bus leaving downtown Beijing, headed toward the section of the Great Wall known as Mutianyu.
The bus reminded me of my project: Seated behind us was an Australian man and his Japanese girlfriend; in the row of chairs across from theirs sat two elderly Jewish businessmen, who were in front of a Canadian-American couple, and a woman traveling with her parents from Singapore. A triad of French women took up the rear. Each traveler was there for a different reason, each with a different story.
Somehow, from the 7 billion human beings spread across the six continents, 20 people from the far reaches of the planet had all ended up together on the same crazy bus headed toward the Great Wall of China. "My bus is something large in my mind. It is a cosmic bus holding sparks and back firing into the Milky Way and turning the corner of Betelgeuse without a hand signal." — John Steinbeck
The pollution-induced haze was heavy as we caught our first glimpse of the Wall — a black silhouette against a sky, which had become a sheet of dull, throbbing light. The first step onto the Great Wall is ethereal — the feeling that your foot is touching something ancient, something solid enough to withstand a millenia of batterings from Mammon and Nature alike.
After hiking along to the
first watchtower, I decided to set up my trinkets for the first few
shots. Grabbing a wrought-iron butterfly I picked up while in Haiti, I
savored the irony of it. As I set up a carved-stone hippo on the
battlement of the wall, I thought of the friend who had bought it in
Kenya, and how it would have been a little over a year before that she
was in an African market, purchasing that stone hippo. I tried to find
the best way to make a South African armband appear in the photograph.
Each trinket carried with it a unique story. Each trinket carried with
it ghosts of past adventures. And each trinket carried with it the hope
of a future journey. 
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