Philip Arneill

Photographer

philiparneill.com

Now Boarding

This work is a visual scrapbook: a meditation on flight, travel, and memory.

I have travelled to more countries than I ever could have imagined in the last 25 years. While the days of the perforated boarding pass were already numbered, it took the more or less complete closure of airports in March 2020 to realise how much regular flights had become part of normal life for many of us, especially for those used to living overseas.

The weathered passport, in a colour no longer de rigeur in the post-Brexit UK,

granted me access to all these places.

By Dublin Airport

Unknown

Inadvertently stored, now fading boarding passes - some barely legible - are testament to the one-time ubiquity of flight in my life, represented also by photos from just some of my travels; memories once vivid, gradually decolourising in my mind's eye.

To Vancouver

Dublin Airlink 747

Hong Kong - Yangon

On March 28th 2020 the Irish government announced a strict lockdown: people were allowed to shop for essentials and exercise within a 2km boundary of their houses.

By Dublin Airport

Myanmar

London - Cairo

Belfast - London

Dublin Airport

Cambodia

Belfast - London

Paris - Cairo

Kota Kinabalu - Tokyo

On May 1st 2020, Covid-19 Irish government travel restrictions for essential shopping and exercise only were loosened to a 5km boundary limit.

Hong Kong - Tokyo

Myanmar

Hong Kong - Hanoi

Istanbul - Dublin

Vietnam

Unknown

Cairo - Alexandria

Iceland

Dublin - Paris

Washington DC - Dublin

Hong Kong - Denpasar

On June 8th 2020 travel restrictions were relaxed to the limits of the county boundary, or within 20 km of people's houses if crossing county borders.

Dublin Airport

In August, after 5 months of restrictions I finally visited (not to fly, only photograph) the somewhat surreal landscape of Dublin Airport's Terminal 2 and its surrounding fields, once so familiar, now eerily empty and shuttered, even since the resumption of international flights.

Dublin Airport

T2, Dublin Airport

Beirut - Cairo

Rome - Tokyo

T2 Food Court, Dublin Airport

Bangkok - Tokyo

T2 Food Court, Dublin Airport

Cambodia

T2 Food Court, Dublin Airport

Laos

The most recent smartphone-friendly boarding passes are from the final flights I took in the 6 months before the lockdown in Ireland. In 2020 alone I had already flown 7 times in blissful, pre-Covid ignorance.

Dublin - Helsinki

T2 Departures

Cardiff - Dublin