If you wanna know, you gotta go. Iowa City residents were subject to a slideshow treat on Wednesday night when hardcore punk iconoclast, Henry Rollins visited The Englert Theater on his Travel Slideshow tour. Attendees enjoyed a night of storytelling and personal reflection from Rollins as he progressed through a decades-spanning photo gallery covering a diverse assortment of landscapes and material.

Rollins’s prolific career dates back to 1980, when Rollins gained initial recognition fronting the pioneering hardcore punk band, Black Flag from 1981 until 1986. Following the band’s breakup, Rollins’s music career has continued through Rollins Band, as well as an intimidatingly large catalogue of spoken word albums. Rollins has also pursued interests outside of music throughout his career, including acting, radio hosting, journalism, activism, and, showcased on his latest tour, photography.

On his Travel Slideshow tour, Henry Rollins bounced around the globe with his photographs, providing the stories behind them, as well as pondering how traveling has impacted his life.

At 8 p.m., Rollins popped out from behind the Englert stage, and candidly greeted the audience. Before jumping into the slideshow, Rollins emphasized his purpose in traveling to the audience, a purpose that would resonate throughout the photos he shared: to understand the non-western world.

For well-over two hours, Rollins took the audience on a world-tour, beginning in Afghanistan, and ending in South Africa, and had Rollins not spoken a mile-a-minute during the slideshow, the the event very-well could have stretched into the early hours of Thursday morning.

Despite his fast-paced speech, the content of his presentation was easy to grasp and richly detailed. Along the way in the tour, Rollins made a stop in Siberia, and talked of his bone chilling experience riding the Trans-Siberian Express in the middle of February; he made stops in Tehran and Baghdad, showing photos taken from choppers on his USO shows in the region.

Later on in the show, Rollins’s humanitarian side became more prominent. During a stop in Hanoi, he showed photographs of Agent Orange victims, and Vietnamese veterans still dealing with the effects of the war decades later. During a stop in Phnom Penh, Rollins took us to the killing fields and turned existential on the audience, trying to grasp how humanity on Earth can be both at its most remarkable and productive, but still hold the potential to be so destructive. Rollins made a domestic stop as well in New Orleans, focusing on a Katrina victim, inviting the audience to sympathize with total loss and grief of a life, and a complete relocation to a new one.

Throughout his collection of photos, Rollins reiterated to keep the prejudice of Western thought in mind when viewing the photos, and to consider everything seen with openness and understanding. Despite his good intentions, and a slideshow relatively free of problematism, Rollins himself broke his creed when discussing the photographs he took in North Korea, as he described ignorantly teasing his tour guides despite their kindness. Additionally, there was a slight impression throughout that Rollins assumed the crowd had never considered how non-Western peoples live, which, given his audience, was a bit patronizing at times.

Despite this, Rollins passion for travel and global understanding prevailed for the most part. Rollins closed with more personal material; photographs that he, and fellow hardcore legend Ian Mackaye took of each other, as well as a photo of Rollins auditioning for Black Flag in the early 80s. Once again, he concluded with his thoughts on how travelling impacted him, and the value it holds for everyone as well.

“Live as eventfully as you can,” Rollins urged, adding that the opportunities to do so decrease with age.

Rollins left audience members with an air of optimism and inspiration, and with 40-odd dates left to go in his tour, he’s not even close to being done inspiring more.