Former professor’s photos depict international travel

Nine years ago, John Woodcock retired from IU to travel the world.

Since his days as an associate English professor, Woodcock has pursued photography.

Most recently, he traveled to Thailand with his wife Peggy to experience the culture there first-hand.

On Oct. 29, Woodcock displayed his photo essay, “A Tourist’s View of Thailand,” at the Venue Fine Art & Gifts.

Woodcock has worked with several photography organizations, including Flashes of Hope, a national group of independent volunteer photographers who take pictures of children with cancer and deliver the images to the children’s parents.

Also involved in the local art scene, Woodcock is currently in charge of organizing photo exhibits for the Bloomington Photography Club and has been a frequent contributor to Bloom Magazine. One of his images was on the cover of the magazine two years ago.

Related to his recent exhibit, Woodcock also pursues travel photography. He claims he has been lucky enough to take a trip, sometimes two, every year to such countries as Turkey, Egypt and, beginning Nov. 5, Morocco.

Woodcock’s recent Thailand photo essay display contained a series of miscellaneous photos, some of his own and some of his wife’s. The display focused on the culture, cities, landmarks and landscape of contemporary Thailand.

To provide historical perspective, Woodcock included three or four pictures of Bangkok that he had taken during his return from military duty in Japan in 1965.

They depicted Bangkok before the streets had been paved and when boats were used frequently for travel on the canals. He referred to the city as the “Asian Venice.”

The more recent photos in the exhibit show contemporary images of Thailand with a focus not only on the architecture of the country, which includes magnificent temples and historic capitals, now in ruins, but also on the Thai people and their culture.

Woodcock and his wife took most of their photographs while travelling on a bus tour that drove them to Bangkok and then north to the point where Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet.

Later, the two ended up in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where they visited an elephant and tiger preserve.

“We had to think about (visiting the tiger preserve) before we did it,” Woodcock said. “There were just a few, tiny nervous moments, but it was amazing, as you can imagine.”

While Woodcock described his incredible admiration for the “typical tourist sites” around Thailand, it was the long-reigning monarchy and the deep pervasiveness of Buddhism in Thailand that he found most striking, he said.

The current king of Thailand has been on the thrown for 67 years, Woodcock said. He also acknowledged that the monarch seems like an “enlightened person” and that the “Thai people seem to like him.”

Woodcock also encountered and captured many instances of family worship and children learning the practice of Buddhism, common in Thailand.

Woodcock claimed both of these observations seemed to prove feelings of harmony and unity among the Thai natives.

“One gets a sense of Thailand being a very unified country under this king and under Buddhism, and that struck us particularly strongly because of the very polarized political situation that we had left behind in the United States,” Woodcock said.

Woodcock and his wife will soon be visiting Morocco. He said he does not know what will come out of the trip, but he knows it will be interesting.

As for other new projects in the making, Woodcock has not begun working on any just yet. 

“The desire to get some kind of image, whether it’s of a desert sunrise or a revolutionary demonstration, the desire to make the best possible image you can of that will often take you close to that thing that you would have otherwise not seen without your camera,” Woodcock said. “I think of that a lot when I travel.”