In 2013, journalist Paul Salopek took the first step of his 24,000-mile storytelling odyssey across the globe in the footsteps of our ancestors: the Out of Eden Walk. From Ethiopia to the tip of South America, this journey led Salopek to Northern India in 2018-2019, where myself along with photographer John Stanmeyer retraced his path through Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
Documenting his journey through the Riverland meant covering issues such as water pollution and illegal sand mining, but it also meant searching for a subtle narrative to depict the everyday life around the rivers and highlighting it through a slow and poetic visual language.
The vertical videos resulted from this assignment were used as Instagram Stories on @natgeo.
Images and videos from the assignment, as well as a piece written by me, were published on National Geographic’s Out of Eden Walk blog.
