Thursday 30 January 2014

Mario Gerth | A Biblical Journey

Photography Mario Gerth-All Rights Reserved
Ancient religious sites, and rites...combined with lush monochrome photography...and you have, in my estimation, a winning combination that feeds one's visual and intellectual senses.

I'm very pleased that photographer Mario Gerth, not only follows my blog, but kindly also sent me his recent work from northern Ethiopia. He trekked more than 350 miles by foot and donkey through the Simien Mountains as well as visiting the old pilgrimage towns of Lalibela and Gondar.

Although Mario has a dedicated website (more of it later on in this post), he has a Flickr account for his wonderful monochrome photographs of his A Biblical Journey.

In the Simien Mountains, Mario encountered lives so ancient and remote that he described the scenes the Old Testament. The Semien Mountains lie in northern Ethiopia, north east of Gondar, and are a World Heritage Site. Mario met monks and deacons praying with ancient Bibles, devotees climbing hours to worship in rock-cut churches, along with farmers and shepherds whose ways of life have not changed in thousands of years.

Mario Gerth is a German travel photographer and a photojournalist who has visited 77 countries. His photographs have been sown in international exhibitions and published in various magazines. He works as a banker - part-time - in Germany and as a photographer / journalist in Africa. He traveled through Africa during the past 24 months biking from Cape Town to Cairo...as well as walking, trekking, by boat or by train.

When you get the chance to set aside enough time, I encourage you to view his main website, and in particular his Sons of the Wind category, which features gorgeous portraits of Omo Valley tribes, of tribes of Angola, of Kenya and Namibia, and of Burkina Faso.

You might also be tempted to view a short video of these portraits in an earlier blog post of Mario's work.

REI | De Las Flores

REI by Tewfic El-Sawy on on Exposure