Going Down to Rio (2)

It’s been long overdue. Boxes of prints and other photographic paraphernalia needed slimming down if I wasn’t to drown in a myriad of contact sheets, machine prints and long expired film stock. But slipping to the floor were two long forgotten pages of a travel magazine from 1987. The spread, from the March issue of Business Traveller, announced my only real competition success over all these years. Judged by Lord Litchfield (notice the Olympus connection once more!), I won two return business class tickets for my wife and I to Singapore. Moreover, we were given two weeks B&B at the Hyatt Regency. But here’s the rub. I still cannot ever remember taking my winning photograph.

It was March 1982. I attended a scientific conference in Rio de Janeiro that finished on a Friday and on the following Monday due to travel to Argentina for some field work. A whole weekend to explore Rio: how lucky, you are saying. But wait. On the Friday evening I started to run a very high temperature and every part of my throat became swollen. By the Sunday afternoon, I tried to wobble put of the hotel to get some fresh air. I headed towards the Botanical Gardens armed with – you have guessed it – my Olympus. I took a few frames but then decided to return and resume horizontality. The shot of the Corcovado and the statue of Christ the Redeemer appearing as if on top of a cloud was taken from the gardens through a febrile fog. Did my subconscious thought processes kick in? Or was it serendipity? Certainly not much conscious thought went into this shot. It is not technically perfect: but it won!

I left on the Monday to Buenos Aires, only to leave a few weeks later in the middle of the Falklands War. Who says travel photography is easy?

Corcovado, Rio de Janeiro, March 1982