Meet Nicholas Marino Cycling All Remote Africa And Asia

Originally from Argentina, I am an architect and photographer who travels the world by bicycle, specifically around remote regions, in the pursuit of the cultures and sub-cultures that in one way or another resist the globalization process, either by deliberately trying to preserve their traditional values or by being marginalized by the system. Due to the nature of traveling by bicycle, I am able to relate very intimately to the places I visit thus spending most of the time in nature and with local people which is where I focus most of my interest.

 

I am out there to face this world, to be fascinated and frustrated by it. I am out there to engage people who are sometimes so radically different from the way I was brought up that the more I engage them the more I learn to see the world from a different perspective. It keeps both my heart and mind fresh, open and alive, it helps me find my own path and makes my life richer. It is in that intimacy that is built through the empathic connection with other human beings where my photography thrives.How do you go from gorila style after 2.5 months cycling across the equatorial rainforest of Central Africa, to something closer to a human being? This is how, and this is only half of it, the rest consists of taking several consecutive showers. I was staying at the house of my dearest cameroonian friend Ernestine,(laughing behind me in the video) in the middle of one of the biggest “quartiers” (slums) of Yaoundé, when I told her: Ernestine, my dear, I need to morph, I can’t stop scratching myself, I think I brought half the population of bugs from the jungle and they are living in my hair and beard, so off we went across the muddy street to Jean, the hairdresser and this is what happened in only a few minutes, I think Kafka would re-write metamorphosis had he seen me. Not even a hear was left within my nose

In photography, the term “subject” is generally used to refer to the photographed person. Personally, I find this term to be very cold, very detached, or at least disconnected to the way in which I approach people. The people are the very reason why I travel the world. Not only because people fascinate me, the different and the similar ones, but because they teach me, they make me more humane; they have the generosity to lend me every day their own pair of eyes so I can see and feel another world, a world that I would never get to know if I obstinately persisted in using my own eyes alone. That’s why, with the exception of some specific cases, I love the people I photograph and have profound respect for them, they are not subjects/objects to me, and in this point I am not a photographer anymore. My photos, good or not, with more or less impact, seek to capture who those people are, those with whom I share my life away from home, my family and my friends. My photos are a result of, and not necessarily a goal in itself. Those people are my family in my nomadic life, they are the ones who take care of me, who love me, who accompany me every day while I ride. When I portray people I portray the intimate link that I established with them rather than a mere exotic face. These photos I post today, they are not going to come out in any magazine, but these are the kind of photos (in this case of Namibia) that I spend more hours looking at with a smile drawn in my soul. Those of any morning of my life, here with these three adorable Himba teenagers in the middle of f…..g nowhere, laughing our asses off at our differences, without speaking the same language and simply enjoying the magic of a human encounter. Every and each of them is special. Today I’m on the road again, now heading towards Côte D’ Ivoire and in search of a lot more of these moments. (photos June 2015)

 

Portraying human beings and the environments where they live in; portraying the human condition in the uttermost dignifying way are my clear intentions because in every single person in this world there is dignity, there’s humanity, there is something inside every one that intrinsically links them to me and that is what we all share in common.