Panoramic Colombia,New

Probably no country in the world enjoys greater geographical variety than Colombia. And as in so many places, the country's political jurisdictions, drawn up arbitrarily, have little relation to natural or human boundaries. Here, then, we look beyond manmade frontiers at the rich mixture of landscape, people and cultures which make up presentday Colombia. We meet, amongst others, the funloving inhabitants of the Caribbean coast, the forthright, hardworking paisas of Antioquia, the quietmannered country folk of the Boyac highlands each one so different from the other, and all of them conditioned by their own particular history and the very contours of the land from which they have sprung. It is, above all, the land that interests us here the panorama.The photographs which illustrate Panoramic Colombia have been taken by a Roundshot 360degree camera which revolves so as to take in everything anyone might observe by standing still and slowly turning full circle. The effect is to place the viewer at the very centre of the picture. In fact, the book's intention is to take its stance at the heart of each event (or scene) depicted here, as a silent and permanent witness to what is taking place. Light and shade converge at the centre. Earth and water mingle there. So does Man and the sky above him. Here the One meets the Many, city streets fuse into the countryside, and we perceive those centrifugal forces which spin outwards and the centripetal ones which draw back in again, both searching for a larger, more luminous Colombia, a place of strange contrasts, a land that is ancient but ever new.Probably no country in the world enjoys greater geographical variety than Colombia. And as in so many places, the country's political jurisdictions, drawn up arbitrarily, have little relation to natural or human boundaries. Here, then, we look beyond manmade frontiers at the rich mixture of landscape, people and cultures which make up presentday Colombia. We meet, amongst others, the funloving inhabitants of the Caribbean coast, the forthright, hardworking paisas of Antioquia, the quietmannered country folk of the Boyac highlands each one so different from the other, and all of them conditioned by their own particular history and the very contours of the land from which they have sprung. It is, above all, the land that interests us here the panorama.The photographs which illustrate Panoramic Colombia have been taken by a Roundshot 360degree camera which revolves so as to take in everything anyone might observe by standing still and slowly turning full circle. The effect is to place the viewer at the very centre of the picture. In fact, the book's intention is to take its stance at the heart of each event (or scene) depicted here, as a silent and permanent witness to what is taking place. Light and shade converge at the centre. Earth and water mingle there. So does Man and the sky above him. Here the One meets the Many, city streets fuse into the countryside, and we perceive those centrifugal forces which spin outwards and the centripetal ones which draw back in again, both searching for a larger, more luminous Colombia, a place of strange contrasts, a land that is ancient but ever new.