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PAN-AMERICAN HIGHWAY The idea for this mammoth project came about quite spontaneously on New Year's Day 2001 in a conversation with my wife – as we sat in the back of a pick-up driving through the uplands of Guatemala. On this public holiday, there is not a single bus to be found in the entire country. This was followed by over a dozen research trips, then finally the complete transit journey from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in 2004/2005. During the years of the working process I saw the cultural diversity of the American double-continent emerge as a key photographic aspect. An individual culture creates identity, but in these times of globalisation many borders become blurred, including that between culture and folklore. The impact of our "First World" on the indigenous peoples of America in particular has a sad, 500-year-old history, yet at the same time I often encountered a newly awakened self-awareness on my travels, especially in Latin America.
Naturally, I also used the camera to realise my own on-the-road dreams
and yearnings on the "Dream Highway of the World". Especially in the
"land of unlimited possibilities" I also had to come to terms with
clichés, commerce and artificial worlds, but along the
But why take photographs at all today in the world of Google and MTV? Because that special moment still exists in which the essence of encounter or even life itself, the spirit of a place, unmistakably shines through. As a hunter for the magic moment you need a lot of intuition, experience in the double sense and naturally also the right skills and tools in order to capture this fleeting treasure photographically. When it works, the image is much more than the mere surface; it gets under our skin and moves us. Shooting technique While travelling on location the Leica M7 with 35 mm and 90 mm lenses, as well as the tried and tested B+W KR 1.5 Skylight filters were the ideal tools to work unobtrusively yet in the midst of events with the necessary sensitivity and respect.
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Panamericana:
Die legendäre Traumroute zieht sich
von Alaska bis nach Feuerland über
Tausende von Kilometern und durch
grandiose Landschaften, mystische
Kulturen und pulsierende Städte.
Peter Gebhard