John Batdorff II: Peru

It runs in the family, as they say.

John Batdorff II is the son of two avid photographers, and it was only natural that he was "infected by" the same passion. Based in Chicago and in Ennis (Montana), John developed his craft early on by photographing for his family's newspaper, and enhanced it by specializing in landscape and travel photography.

His work has been exhibited in museums and featured in various publications.

While John's galleries include one of India, I'm bucking my own trend this time and featuring his work of Peru.

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NPR: Traveling Down The Amazon

Here's Traveling Down The Amazon, an intelligently produced NPR multimedia feature that combines audio, stills and graphics to tell the story of transcontinental highway being built in Peru and Brazil which promises to bring economic opportunities, and also acute environmental problems, to one of the most remote places on earth.

NPR correspondent Lourdes Garcia-Navarro and staff photographer John Poole traveled the Peruvian route to produce this series.

I found this via a Twitter post (aka a "tweet") by Tracy Boyer, the editor of the excellent Innovative Interactivity blog, that deals with new multimedia and which she appropriately calls "a digital watering hole for multimedia enthusiasts".

Traveling Down The Amazon is not the kind of feature that one can watch in one sitting...it's too long and too dense to absorb in one go. So bookmark it for whenever you have the time to follow it properly.

I haven't had the time to watch except the first chapter The Road, and found it surprising that the producers of the piece haven't sync'ed the stills and the narration by Garcia-Navarro together. It hasn't bothered me much because I could return or go forward to the still photograph I was interested in, and still keep the narration going on.

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Kamil Bialous: Ayacucho Procession

Here's the work of Kamil Bialous, a Toronto-based adventure travel photographer who describes himself as laid-back, but a "go-with-the-flow" kind of person. Out of his multi-facets portfolio, I chose his photographs of the Semana Santa in Ayacucho, Peru.

Semana Santa in Ayacucho is a celebration of Easter Holy Week festivities unlike anywhere else in the world, and these photographs made on April 10, 2009 showcase the emotional procession around Ayacucho's Plaza de Armas.

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Moises Saman: Machu Picchu

Photograph © Moises Saman-All Rights Reserved
I noticed that The New York Times' featured a slideshow of Machu Picchu's photographs by Moises Saman, who's better known as a conflict photographer, having covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The slideshow is titled The Lost City of the Incas while the accompanying article is written by Simon Romero.

The article's premise is that while Hiram Bingham (a model for the fictional Indiana Jones) has always been credited with discovering the Incan city of Machu Picchu in 1911, evidence has emerged that a German adventurer may have preceded him. Some records show that the German adventurer bought land in the area in the 1860s. It's an interesting read for those who feel (like I do) that many countries' heritage and patrimony have been pillaged by colonizing Western powers (especially European). For instance, I read that Ethiopia is now demanding that Britain’s museums return some of its most significant religious treasures and artifacts, including the Ethiopian royal crown, 140 years after they were looted by marauding British troops.

As for Moises Saman, he became a staff photographer at New York Newsday from 2000-07, and is currently a freelance photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. His work received many awards and recognitions, including in the 2007 World Press Photo contest and the UNICEF Photo of the Year awards. He also received a World Press Photo award for his coverage of the presidential elections in Haiti, as well as being named Photographer of the Year by the New York Press Photographers Association.

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