Month / July 2013

by Sebastian Buchner

Terranigma

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Welcome to our mysterious home – I would like to introduce all of you to a project of mine. This is an introduction, but also an attempt to raise funds, so if you are allergic to such requests, stop reading right now 😉

Terranigma (terra = earth, enigma = riddle, terranigma – the earth as an eternal riddle) is a project that I conceived of in 2013, inspired by a preceding visit to the Himalaya region of Spiti in Northwestern India and by conversations and work with fellow travellers, photographers and filmmakers. My goal is to create a platform to preserve and document some of the most remote, strange and culturally valuable places and traditions on our planet through photography and writing.

After seeing ancient monasteries and thousand year old traditions in the valleys of the High Himalaya I came to realize that much of this wealth might be – and probably will be gone from the face of the earth forever in five to ten years time.

The world changes at a breakneck pace. Change, as a matter of fact, is the only thing that is constant in our existence. I want to record and show the world in the way I percieve it while I am travelling: as a deeply fascinating, fragile place full of mysteries and riddles, full of life, of traditions and also of change.

Do you consider such a project worthwhile? If you do, I am asking you to seriously consider supporting it. I aim to create a platform for various photographers and independent documentary filmmakers to collect knowledge of disappearing things. This must – out of necessity – start with my own photography.

This is what I am asking you: If you think it worthwhile, go to my website (http://www.sebastianbuchner.weebly.com/terranigma.html) and have a look at the PDF file. I am offering all of these images for sale in various formats, from very large to very small, from expensive to really cheap.

All money raised this way goes directly into funding further travels and to help create an online platform for photography, documentary film and independent cultural or anthropological reporting. I don’t expect this will be easy or that anything at all will happen without a serious amount of work – I am thankful for anyone who takes enough time to look at it and perhaps is willing to share it as well.

Thank you,
Sebastian Buchner.

by Sebastian Buchner

How to Start a Journey

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I love the view from a plane. Details disappear, faces, bodies, houses, villages – making way for the features of the land: rivers, forests, fields, mountains, clouds. The world becomes both smaller and larger and I become very quiet.

  This is when I realize that I am starting something new. The world, my world, with its clear details and inimitable instances becomes one of many similar worlds. I learn what – in my life – is similar to hundred other lives, when I watch the landscape and its repetitions. And I learn what – in my life – is unique.

  The distance takes away all the needless clutter of my life, leaving the few essentials – of love, of friendship, of trust – burning in me.

  This is when I realize that I can leave for a long time. The world seems open, an endless patterned thing of repetitions and uniqueness. I feel some fear, but it is refreshing. This merely wakes me up.

  When I get back down, all those many dreams of leaving and of travelling, they will become solid instances of life. The world is large indeed and just the right kind of the same everywhere.