Isla Campbell on why a Victorian archaeologist’s newly digitised photographs have thrown her own lack of ambition into sharp relief
I went to see Routes, Ruins and Reconnaissance, the Royal Geographical Society’s new exhibition on Gertrude Bell, purely because a friend dragged me along on a rainy Tuesday, and I have emerged from it a changed and mildly resentful woman.
Who Gertrude Bell Actually Was And Why This Exhibition Exists Now
Writer, traveller, archaeologist, and eventually invaluable to British intelligence during the First World War, all achieved via newly-digitised images created from the Society’s original negatives, which the exhibition displays with a clarity I genuinely wasn’t prepared for on a Tuesday lunch break.
What Actually Got Under My Skin Looking At These Photographs
The sheer volume of what one woman apparently achieved with, presumably, considerably less admin software than I currently have and still somehow cannot manage to reply to three emails in a single sitting.
How I Actually Spent The Rest Of That Afternoon After Leaving The Exhibition
Sitting in a nearby café attempting to draft an entirely new five-year life plan on a napkin, a plan I have since misplaced, which feels like exactly the kind of thing Gertrude Bell would never have allowed to happen to her own carefully documented expeditions.
Whether I’d Actually Recommend This Exhibition To Other Similarly Under-Achieving Londoners
Yes, cautiously, with the warning that you will leave feeling a specific and pointed sense of personal inadequacy that no amount of gift shop postcards can fully soothe.
What This Whole Visit Has Taught Me About Comparing Myself To Formidable Historical Women On A Random Tuesday
Mostly that it’s a genuinely bad idea to do this on an empty stomach, and that the RGS gift shop does sell a very nice tote bag if you need something to hold the fragments of your reorganised life plan on the way home. More London culture confessions live here on bohiney.com.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
