World Off Track - Tapa dura

World Off Track is Jarret Schecter's third rail-mapped photographic project, following America Off Track and Russia Off Track. Schecter spent eight years travelling on the world's varying railways and subsequently documented the constantly changing landscape with his camera. The book presents his journey through images as well interspersing unusual rail facts for the armchair traveller contrasting and comparing the rail journeys across the globe. Schecter where possible views a country by pre-determined rail routes and thus through his pictures a reader can observe the interconnecting journeys through the United States, China, Russia, India, Brazil, Japan, Canada, South Africa and Egypt. He uses his archive of photographic documentation to illustrate the link between infrastructure and wealth. The railway has, since its inception, been used as a continued marker of national progress. National competition to build the fastest and most efficient trains is often exponential to the needs of ordinary people, who can only be viewed through these service's windows. There has been a recent renaissance of interest in rail travel; the authenticity of a viewpoint from a train window and the bohemic freedom of the rail traveller has never been so attractive. Although we may not have the time or resources to cross the world by rail ourselves, viewing the world through Schecter s photographs is a more than satisfactory consolation.

In 1990 Jarret Schecter purchased a Pentax camera. Since then he has travelled the world. Committed to socio-political issues, Schecter believes that photography can bring awareness to social injustices the world faces today. Schecter, born in 1963, lives in New York City.