Never - Never Land

In January 2014 I met this interesting group of long term travelers who settled in a Hostel for the first time . Fascinated by this place and it’s people, who seemed so incredibly free, I decided to return in December 2014 with my camera on a self-experiment. In the first month I was positive and motivated. We drifted, wandered aimlessly, letting adventure find us. Everywhere we went we played our own music and rode on the roofs of taxis around the island. We dressed up, drank and danced through the night until the sun would rise. After a few weeks of successful integration and initial enthusiasm this travel-utopia transformed more and more into some kind of a dystopia. For me it felt like the rules people were running away from, the structure they hated in their lives, were found in a different sense in the hostel. As time passed the Hostel became like a Theatre production without consequence. People seemed to automatically shift into roles without realizing it. Instead of telling a story about this place in particular, I am telling a story about a subject that has been repeated for generations in different times and places, found in political models, subcultures and religion. Never - Never Land questions the romantic idea of backpacking in developing countries.