http://www.idesirevintageposters.com/nielsen-far-east-by-sas-cranes-c.1959.html

We live in an age when invention has never been more abundant and thrilling. Arts and science-based inventions carry us to seemingly vast improvements over the way it used to be.

Egged on by a sensation-cued media, we are all susceptible to involvement in cool and risky business as feeding a vague need to rise above that banality which so readily drags us down. Thus, the flat-out personal consumption and large-scale, nature-damaging factors of this adventure generally come to light as a manageable minus-side of an irresistible plus-side.

Our cleverness not being amenable to the possibility that most of our excitements are overrated and a pathetic excuse for cogent intensity, there is an inadequate commitment to curtailing the despoliation of the environment. As a result, in the past twenty or so years huge numbers of wild animals have been killed, with many species entirely wiped out or reduced to the point of endangerment to total disappearance.

That disconcerting history comprises the irony of vintage graphic designs promoting travel to countries no longer the treasure-trove of wildlife they once could celebrate and profit from. Exotica still obtains–the porn trade, for instance, never more lucrative–but the gift of real wildness has largely disappeared. Our first such blue-chip promotion deals–from the perspective of the present, delusionally–with the once-abundant and breathtakingly gorgeous red-crowned crane, not that long ago very numerous in Japan, Korea and China; but now down to about 2500. Continue reading →