Erik Kennedy

The Other Way by David Trubridge (David Trubridge Press, 2022), 317pp, 128 colour plates, $99

Renowned designer David Trubridge has always demonstrated a commitment to sustainability and the environment in his work, whether in furniture, lighting or other media. The Other Way, a book of travel essays and photographs, allows him to articulate his ideas on these subjects in new ways.

The ‘other way’ of the title refers to Trubridge’s favoured travel itinerary: if a place attracts ‘teeming crowds’, he will instinctively go the other way, to the land. ‘Humans once had a close and balanced relationship with all the natural world around them’, he writes. ‘This instinctive respect and empathy formed the basis of spirituality. I want to reclaim that spirituality and gently place it back where it belongs in the centre of our connection to the whole of “Life”.’ His desire to foreground nature—and his corresponding wariness of humanity, especially Westerners—characterises the book. It is deep ecology, a principled resistance to the instrumentalisation of the natural world.  [Read more…]