TCF Ep. 476 - Michael Benanav

The Candid Frame: Conversations on Photography

Ibarionex R. Perello

Cameras, Art, Photoshop, Visual Arts, Career, Interviews, Photographers, Arts, Photography, Photo, Digital

4.8 • 749 Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2019

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Michael Benanav is an author and freelance photographer known for immersing in foreign cultures and bringing compelling stories and images back from distant places. His most recent book is Himalayan Bound. Michael's first book, Men Of Salt: Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan of White Gold, tells the true story of a 1000-mile journey with one of the world's last working camel caravans, hauling salt along ancient trade routes from the heart of the desert to the fabled city of Timbuktu. The book was nominated by Barnes & Noble for their Discover prize and was named a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association (even though it was written for fully-grown adults). Michael's second book, The Luck of the Jews: An Incredible Story of Loss, Love, & Survival in the Holocaust, (originally published as Joshua & Isadora), traces the astonishing wartime experiences that brought his paternal grandparents together on the deck of a refugee boat sailing from Bucharest to Istanbul at the end of 1944. His latest book, Himalaya Bound: One Family’s Quest to Save Their Animals & an Ancient Way of Life, follows a family of nomadic water buffalo herders on their annual spring migration into the Indian Himalayas - offering an intimate glimpse into a rarely-seen way of life, while exploring the challenges faced by this endangered tribe. It was named one of the three best books of 2018 by the Society of American Travel Writers. Podcast Awards Photographer Links: Listener Intro: Michael Steiner Education Resources: Candid Frame Resources Download the free Candid Frame app for your favorite smart device. Click here to download for . Click here to download Support the work we do at The Candid Frame with contributing to our Patreon effort. You can do this by visiting or visiting the website and clicking on the Patreon button. You can also provide a one-time donation via . You can follow Ibarionex on and .

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Michael Steiner from Los Angeles. You're listening to The Candid Frame.
0:11.8	Much has been made about bias in the media, especially with respect to politics.
0:18.2	But there's also a cultural bias that exists with industrialized and wealthy countries
0:23.4	that emphasize the world of technology, social media, celebrity, and disposable incomes.
0:30.4	In the age of 24-hour news, the struggles of people trying to maintain a traditional way of life
0:36.5	are rarely showcased.
0:39.4	But photographer and writer Michael Beninoff has long been fascinated with nomadic people.
0:46.0	His first book, Men of Salt, Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan of White Gold,
0:52.0	involved him taking a 1,000- mile journey with one of the world's last
0:56.5	working camel caravans, hauling salt along ancient trade routes from the heart of the desert
1:02.9	to the city of Timbuktu. His latest book, Himalaya Abound, now in paperback, tells the story
1:10.0	of another nomadic people in India, the Van Gajar.
1:14.5	These people's lives revolve around their herds of buffalo, with whom they migrate annually
1:20.6	to their ancestral grazing lands in the Himalayas. However, the conservation efforts in India,
1:27.2	including the establishment of national
1:29.1	parks, has threatened a way of life that they have practiced for generations.
1:34.8	In the Indian situation, each of these Van Gujar families have a meadow up in the Himalayan
1:40.8	Highlands where they go to, each family goes to their own meadow every summer for year after year, generation after generation.
1:49.0	And they don't own the land, it's public land.
1:52.0	And some of that land has been turned into national parks.
1:55.0	And so when I was with them, a number of these nomadic families were told that they were not going to be allowed
2:02.6	into their ancestral meadows ever again because they were now protected as parkland and was really
	...

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