The Ambassador of Ecuador, Kabalan Abisaab, and photographer Fernando Espinosa, at a press briefing yesterday at the Ecuador Embassy in Doha. Salim matramkot
By Fazeena Saleem
DOHA: A photography exhibition promoting artistic and cultural values of Ecuador will open today at Katara, the cultural village.
The exhibition organised by the embassy of Ecuador in Qatar and Katara will feature work of two photographers who has captured the nature of Ecuador.
“This exhibition will showcase Ecuador’s commitment to protect nature, culture and diversity and promote tourism,” said Kabalan Abisaab, Ambassador of Ecuador to Qatar, addressing a pre-exhibition press conference yesterday at his embassy.
The exhibition will be contributing and promoting the dissemination of national policy on protection of environment and habitat of the people of Ecuador.
“Ecuador is the most diverse country in the world in proportion with its size, with the largest amount of flora and fauna. The country is home to a diverse assortment of people hailing form 27 different ethic backgrounds including 13 indigenous groups. This will be reflected in the photography exhibition,” Ambassador Abisaab explained. The 25-day long exhibition will be held at Gallery 1, Building 13 at Katara until January 5.
One section of the exhibition will showcase work by New York based Ecuadorian photographer Fernando Espinosa at the Galapagos Islands over the course of more than two years and 12 visits to capture an environment that is harsh and unrelenting yet beautiful. ‘Galapagos Surreal’ which has also been published in book by Espinosa transforms the landscapes and wildlife of the Galapagos Islands into a surreal representation of the world at large.
According to Espinosa, he creates a different structure of imagery unveiling dense patterns of vegetation and landscape, seamless integration that would be invisible to the naked eye. “I have done some changes to a regular cannon camera. The photos take out all distractions of the colour and it’s black and white,” said Espinosa speaking at the press conference.
The Galápago Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator in the Pacific Ocean, 972km west of Ecuador. The Galápagos Islands and its surrounding waters form an Ecuadorian province, a national park, and a biological marine reserve.
The islands are geologically young and famed for their vast number of endemic species, which were studied by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle.
‘Sons of the sacred waterfalls’ by Nicolas Kingman is a result of more than three years of labour by the photographer and has awaken great interest, particularly about Shuar, an indigenous people of Ecuador and they can not be understood outside of their habitat, given its strong link to nature that nourishes their social and spiritual life.
The Peninsula
