FROM THE BOOK

"Throughout the period of Tulse Lupner's life, from 1911 until at least the 1980s, the suitcase, a basically rectangular and stiff-backed box with a hinged lid and one or more handles, very often fashioned from leather, and made moderately safe with clasps and a simple lock, was a ubiquitous item all over the world. The first eighty years of the 20th century was the democratic Age of the Train, and the suitcase seems to be almost inseparable from a traveling-by-train experience. Practically everyone had a suitcase and it has become a symbol of travel, hopefully travel for voluntary movement, for pleasure and vacation and positive experience and memory, but the huge exodus of people from Greater Europe to the New World, the displacement of peoples all over Asia, the two World Wars and the Holocaust, and the millions of involuntary travelers in the 20th century have made the simple suitcase an image of disturbance, pathos, loss, grief, displacement and tragedy. What would you put in your suitcase when the rapping came on your door in the middle of the night, accompanied by the order, "You have ten minutes to pack a suitcase!". Could the answer have been more than the most basic practical necessities--a toothbrush, a bar of soap, clean underwear, a child's toy, a passport, and all the cash you can muster up in ten minutes? And with the prospect of o return, what of your memories, obsessions, guilty secrets, sentimental associations, ephemeral treasures, all the portable items that define your life and existence, and more than just metaphorically have become your 'cultural baggage'?"

Peter Greenaway, excerpted from 92 Drawings.