Considering that Africa is our cradle, this journey leads through the first landscapes humans ever laid eyes on. Like an ocean’s waves, the Namib’s dunes never changed from afar, but transitioned perpetually at close range. Death lived there, and life right next door in the Okavango Delta, where every soul was fed with green. The mountain ranges, too, were lush as life and the turquoise coastlines sugar water.
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a glimpse
glimpse: NOBODY HATES WATERFALLS | Nobody hates waterfalls. Or sunsets. Or turquoise shores. Nobody finds nature repulsive. I think that’s safe to say. And it feels intuitive. But if you think about it, it’s anything but. It’s not like we can’t perceive ugliness. We can see it in the manmade. Or even in each other. That’s why we have a word for it. But we seem to carry an inherent device in us that universally translates landscapes into beauty even though it seems an unnecessary gadget for our survival. Other animals appear indifferent enough to nature’s face and yet here they are, doing just fine. You never catch a dog hiking up a mountain for the view, but they seem happy and surviving. So why, when, and how did nature code this sense for aesthetics into our DNA?
Deadvlei / Namibia · 2017 desert phantoms
Table Mountain, Cape Town / South Africa · 2017 merger of blues
Lake Bunyonyi / Uganda · 2017 muscle mirror
God's Bridge / Morocco · 2017 carving caramel
Simien Mountains / Ethiopia · 2017 fine mist
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gallery
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related
countries | Africa | Rwanda
Kibuye / Living with Explosive Likelihoods
when home is where disaster lurks
And those who live there, live lives, not odds. They are accustomed to the normality of any given day that isn’t the one when disaster strikes. explore
photos | people