One year later, Distant Era returns to the Gala of Everlasting Change, a live action role-playing game set among the fey, to create portraits of its enchanting creatures…
Continuing Distant Era's brand new series, THE PEOPLE OF LIGHT AND SHADOW, an exploration of fey creatures and the denizens of fairytales, with THE VILA…
Distant Era is proud to present the portraits made for author Hannah Batsel, for her upcoming book THE KNIGHT OF LITTLE IMPORT, and for her personal brand…
In November 2019, Distant Era photographed Chicago: November 2019, a cyberpunk-and-Blade-Runner-inspired test series that experimented with portraits and scenes of science-fiction subject matter using colored gels and photo composites. In this post…
In November 2019, Distant Era photographed Chicago: November 2019, a cyberpunk-and-Blade-Runner-inspired test series that experimented with portraits and scenes of science-fiction subject matter using colored gels and photo composites. In this post…
From the gray, empty stockyards to the desolate lakefront littered with the beached remains of yachts, through the muttering, rainy sprawl of New Chinatown and the dilapidated Marina towers, he runs the…
Chicago. November 2019. The old flooded subway tunnels, the abandoned skyscrapers, the canals flowing over the pathways of the drowned streets with their prosaic names—Wells, Clark, Grand, Chicago—a runner never knows where…
Distant Era photographed the fey of the Gala of Everlasting Change event in September 2022. This week, we proudly present the final four commissioned portraits…
Distant Era photographed the fey of the Gala of Everlasting Change event in September 2022. This week, we proudly present the next two commissioned portraits…
Welcome to The All Worlds Traveller, an eclectic collection of thoughts, pictures, and stories from a Distant Era.
Illustrated with Distant Era art and photographs, these pages explore the stories and worlds of people beyond the here and now, and the people and creative processes behind such stories.
This is a blog about
photography and narrative;
history and myth;
fantasy, science-fiction, and the weird;
creation and experience.
This is a blog about stories.
Steven Townshend
I’m Steven Townshend—your guide, scribe, editor, and humble narrator. The All Worlds Traveller is my personal publication, an exploratory conversation about stories and how we interact with them, from photographs to narratives to games—a kind of variety show in print.
It is a conversation with other artists who explore the past, the future, and the fantastical in their work. Not one world—but all worlds.
Where Distant Era shows stories in images, The All Worlds Traveller is all about the words.
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About a Distant Era
Distant Era creates fine art and portrait photographs of people and places from imagined pasts, possible futures, and magical realities.
In collaboration with other artists, we evoke these distant eras with theatrical costume and makeup, evocative scenery, and deliberate lighting, and we enhance them with contemporary tools to cast these captured moments in the light of long ago or far away.
We long to walk the lion-decorated streets of Babylon, to visit alien worlds aboard an interstellar vessel, and to observe the native dances of elves. Our images are windows to speculative realities and postcards from the past. They are consolation for fellow time travelers who long to look beyond the familiar scenery of the present and gaze upon the people and places of a distant era.
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