Out of Eden Walk: 30 Million Footsteps

A few posts ago I suggested there were no more explorers in the mold of Richard Francis Burton.

I was wrong.

An incredible exploration trek is being planned by Paul Salopek, a writer for the Chicago Tribune and National Geographic, who will be walking the journey taken by early man tens of thousands of years ago.

The walk, Out of Eden, will take 30 million footsteps, over 21, 000 miles over 7 years to complete. It will start in Great Rift Valley in Ethiopia, and will cross the Red Sea into the Middle East, cross China, into Siberia, cross the Bering Strait into Alaska and then walk all the way down the western coasts of North and South America.

Graphic courtesy The Observer

Salopek will be taking a micro-light laptop, video and audio recording tools, since he intends to record his journey; including landscapes and voices and faces of the people he meets on the walk. He will also be taking a satellite phone through which he will be uploading his journal's recordings to his his website.

He tells The Guardian newspaper that "We will be creating a family portrait of humanity for the next seven years."

That promises to be one damn exciting journey for all of us.

Sebastião Salgado: The Nenets of Siberia

Photo © Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas/nbpictures

The new work by my very favorite photographer Sebastião Salgado was featured by The Guardian newspaper in the UK. It's been trending very heavily on Facebook and on Twitter, which is not surprising since so many people admire him and his work.

I not only admire his work, but his way of seeing....as he describes it by saying " If you take a picture of a human that does not make him noble, there is no reason to take this picture. That is my way of seeing things."

But back to his new work.

Mr Salgado's Genesis project is now complete after 30 trips made over 8 years. The project portrays the beauty and the majesty of regions still in a pristine condition, areas where landscapes and wildlife are still unspoiled, places where human communities continue to live according to their ancient culture and traditions.

From The Guardian's very interesting accompanying article,   Mr Salgado's latest trip was to the nomadic Nenets of northern Siberia. The Nenets are also known as Samoyeds, and are an indigenous people in northern arctic Russia. There are 40,000 Nenets in the Russian Federation, most of them living in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Nenets Autonomous Okrug.

The Nenets' lives are defined by reindeer, which are the source of their food, clothing and transport. Every spring, the Nenets move large herds of reindeer from winter pastures on the Russian mainland, travelling more than 1,000 kilometers north to summer pastures in the Arctic Circle.

I ought to also mention that London's Natural History Museum is scheduling an exhibition of Genesis on 11 April - 8 September 2013. There is no way that I will miss it...no way.

Captain Tristram Speedy: Travel Photography At Bonhams

Why would I mention Bonhams, an auction house, on The Travel Photographer's blog?

Well, it's because Bonhams is holding an auction of a rare photographic album of 180 Ethiopian images by Julia Margaret Cameron, Felice Beato and others. These images include a number of self portraits of Captain Tristram Charles Sawyer Speedy(1836-1910), a well-known English explorer and adventurer during the Victorian era, who was also known by his Amharic name 'Báshá Félíka'.

He was a fascinating character who was an Indiana Jones of his time, with a long association with India, Ethiopia and Sudan.

Born in Meerut (India), Captain Speedy was a red-haired bearded man 6'5" tall, who learned to speak Amharic, adopted Ethiopian native dress, and was photographed by Cameron in various guises such as a Bedouin chief, a Nubian chief, a Nubian warrior and much more. He was the inspiration for a number of popular books.

I am enormously interested in news like that because it merges history, Africa, Asia, adventurism, exploration and photography. Despite my abhorrence of colonialism, I consider men such as Richard Francis Burton and now, Tristram, as quintessential eccentric explorers, as orientalists and ethnologists, and as remarkable linguists with an extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures.

They just don't make men that way anymore.

For those who don't know Julia Margaret Cameron: she was a British photographer born in Calcutta, known for her portraits of celebrities of the time. Her photographic career was short, spanning eleven years of her life (1864–1875), and got her first camera when she was 48 as a gift from her daughter.

As for Felice Beato (1832-1909), he was an Italian–British photographer, and one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers. His work provides images of such events as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Second Opium War.

Karl Doyle: Nomadic Souls

Photo © Karl Doyle-All Rights Reserved

Karl Doyle's Nomadic Worlds Series is the type and the quality of work you don't want to miss, especially if -like me- you're interested in ethnography and ethno-photography.

Karl Doyle is originally from Ireland, and relocated to London working with many visual artists. He traveled to Mongolia on the Trans-Mongolian Express train from Beijing to Ulan Bator, and spent weeks on horseback to capture the true essence of the Mongolian nomads. 

In this Nomadic Worlds gallery, he merges the Mongolian Nomads, and the Harajuku Girls of Tokyo and New York’s stylized sub-cultures into one continuing series...to highlight the diversity of their environment.

For larger projects, Karl uses a Sinar 4x5 for studio/interior settings, and a Wista for outside work.

David Lazar: South Asia Collection

Photo © David Lazar-All Rights Reserved

It's not the first time that I post about David Lazar's excellent work on The Travel Photographer's blog. Far from it. But he has just revamped his website, and it has vastly improved the layout of his many collections.

He suggested that I feature his new Kenya gallery which he titled Wildlife & Warriors which has photographs of Masai tribal people, but since I have recently had a post about the Masai, I thought I'd choose his South Asia Collection gallery to headline this post instead.

David is a travel photographer and musician from Brisbane, who is drawn to locations with rich cultural backgrounds, and is especially interested in portrait and landscape photography. His work is frequently published in photography and travel magazines, and in 2012 he won the Travel category in the Smithsonian Photography Competition.

He has been travelling annually since 2004, the year in which he became interested in travel photography.

No two ways about it....this is travel photography in the very sense of the word!

Monica Denevan: Burma

Photo © Monica Denevan-All Rights Reserved

I'm glad to have found Monica Denevan's website with its gorgeous photographs of Burma and China. Trust me...you will find that her some 120 photographs are indeed luminous and gorgeous.

Monica travels with her medium format Bronica, one lens, and a bunch of plastic bags filled with Ilford Delta 400 film. She tells us that her photographs are printed from negatives in her traditional darkroom and selenium toned.

Classic photography in the full meaning of the word, and the farthest thing from the Instagram and Hipstamatic fad.

Born in San Francisco, Monica studied photography at San Francisco State University. She started visiting parts of Burma and China for many years, and always had her Bronica along. Her work was published in ZYZZYVA, Communication Arts Photo Annual, SHOTS, Black and White Magazine, The Photo Review, The Sun, and Artvas-The Photo (Korea) among others.

She is represented by Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco, Duncan Miller Gallery in Santa Monica, Capital Culture Gallery in London, and Tao Evolution Gallery in Hong Kong which produced a small catalogue of her work. Monica’s photographs are in the permanent collection of UCSF Medical Center.

Mauriã Rodrigues Sabbado: Opera Of Sichuan

Photo © Mauriã Rodrigues Sabbado-All Rights Reserved

I was glad to see that Mauriã Rodrigues Sabbado, a Brazilian photographer and a member of my class Introduction To Multimedia Storytelling at the Buenos Aires Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, has recently updated his website with six photo galleries.

Mauriã's documentary photography is centered on Asia, and particularly on Tibet and China. I highlight his gallery Sichuan Opera, which documents a troupe whilst preparing for a performance, and the actual performance itself.

Sichuanese opera is a type of Chinese opera originating in China's Sichuan province around 1700, with Chengdu being its main home. It's well known for its singing, which is more free than the popular Beijing opera form. Sichuan opera is more like a play than other forms of Chinese opera, and the acting is very professional. The music accompanying Sichuanese opera utilizes a small gong and a two stringed traditional "violin".

Alessandra Meniconzi: Nenets Of Arctic Siberia

Photo © Alessandra Meniconzi_All Rights Reserved

“I prefer remote and rugged places, mountainous terrain and desert."

Yes, Alessandra Meniconzi prefers to travel to areas many other travel photographers wouldn't think of going because they're truly remote and inaccessible. An excellent photographer, she's also extremely versatile, and her updated website features new galleries that cover most of the globe's regions.

Alessandra's galleries range from the Arctic Siberia to Ethiopia, from Lapland to the Silk Road, and from Greenland to Tibet and the Himalayas. She worked extensively for more than a decade in the remote areas of Asia, documenting minority people and their traditional cultures. More recently, she focused on the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions that are threatened by climate change, development, and resource extraction.

I chose to feature her Nenets of The Arctic Siberia gallery, as it's one of her most recent work. The Nenets are an indigenous people in northern arctic Russia. According to the latest census in 2002, there are 41,302 Nenets in the Russian Federation. They have a shamanistic and animistic belief system which stresses respect for the land and its resources.

Her photographs have been published widely in magazines, as well as in books for which she was the sole photographer: The Silk Road (2004), Mystic Iceland (2007), Hidden China (2008) and QTI -Alessandra Meniconzi, Il coraggio di esser paesaggio (2011).

Diana Markosian: The Girls of Chechnya

Photo © Diana Markosian-All Rights Reserved

An interesting glimpse in an area that a relatively few are really familiar with...Chechnya, was recently featured by TIME Lightbox.

Diana Markosian's Goodbye My Chechnya is such a glimpse into the lives of young Chechen women who witnessed the horrors of two wars, and are coming of age in a country that is rapidly rediscovering its Muslim laws and traditions.

It's particularly interesting to view Diana's photographs of these Chechen women and their traditions and compare them to Oded Balilty's photographs of the Jewish ultra orthodox communities, which included a series on a traditional Hasidic Jewish wedding.

Two separate religious traditions, often at odds with each other....and yet similar in so many ways. And as both photo essays are made of such compelling photographs, that the comparison between the two from an aesthetic point of view bring this point very clearly to the forefront.

According to Diana Markosian,  Chechnya is experiencing a wave of Islamicization since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Religious dress codes are the rule, young (and polygamous) marriages are frequent and gender roles are increasingly conservative.