The Unexpected Lift

Published on by Otto von Münchow6 Comments

Life moves in cycles. At least, I hope it does. Most of us have good days and bad days, and plenty of days that are neither. Days when we simply go through our routines, probably the majority of them. And then there are those days when life suddenly surprises us, lifts our spirits and reminds us why we keep going.

This week has given me a bit of both.

I have spent most of my days editing and processing photographs I have taken over the past six months or so. There is something satisfying about finally seeing images come alive on the screen. At the same time, it is tedious work. Adding captions and keywords, sorting through files and processing photographs all take time. Even when the processing itself is enjoyable, facing thousands of images can become rather exhausting.

And then, suddenly, something happens that changes the mood entirely. Sometimes, all it takes is an email. But when the message is the kind I received this week, it can feel as if someone has switched on a light.

For the past couple of years, I have been exploring opportunities to exhibit my photography in galleries and other venues. The response has mostly been one rejection after another. At times, I have almost lost the courage to keep trying. I have shared a few of those disappointments here on the blog.

Then this email arrived.

One of the major galleries in my hometown has decided to exhibit a project I have been working on over the past couple of years. Needless to say, I am delighted. After so many rejections, it is a wonderful feeling to have someone believe in the work enough to give it a place on the wall.

The exhibition won’t take place until September next year, which suits me perfectly. I have plenty of time to prepare the photographs and can finally start printing some of the images I have long wanted to see in a larger format, knowing they will eventually be shown.

Suddenly, there is something new to look forward to. The work ahead feels different when you know where it might lead.

And the coming weeks promise to be exciting for another reason. By the time you read this, I will have arrived in Tanzania. Tomorrow, I am due to begin the ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro. As I write this, the forecast warns of a snowstorm near the summit. The climb might turn out to be more challenging than I expected, and reaching the top is by no means guaranteed. Time will tell.

For now, I am still at home, working my way through the photographs from my paddling trip down the Yukon River. A handful of those images accompany this post.

There is always more work to do, more photographs waiting to be edited, more plans that may or may not come to fruition. But every now and then, something falls into place. A small shift in direction is enough to renew your energy and remind you that it is worth continuing, even when the way forward seems uncertain. This week, that reminder arrived in my inbox.

This Week’s Book Read

No One Left to Blame by Charlie Hay explores a haunting question.

After a friend died by suicide in 2011, Hay was left with one question he could not let go of. Why? Why would a 21-year-old take his own life? It is a question the artist has grappled with for more than a decade, and it lies at the heart of this project.

Hay photographs landscapes, sites and environments around the world where people have died by suicide. These are often seemingly ordinary places, yet they become charged with a profound sense of absence. Rather than presenting them simply as sites of tragedy, Hay turns them into spaces for reflection, inviting us to consider the lives and stories that remain beyond our reach.

The work explores mental health, society’s attitudes towards suicide and the cries for help that can go unnoticed. It also challenges the stigma that so often surrounds the subject, reminding us of the importance of speaking openly about something that is still difficult for many to discuss.

No One Left to Blame is a book about suicide, but it acknowledges that no two lives, and no two deaths, are the same. Hay does not offer definitive answers to the question that has haunted him for so long. Instead, he invites us to stay with the uncertainty, to look more closely and to acknowledge the darker, often hidden corners of our shared human experience.

In 2025, No One Left to Blame was selected as one of the winners of The Most Beautiful Books, awarded by Grafill, the Norwegian organisation for design, illustration and visual communication.

Find No One Left to Blame by Charlie Hay on Amazon

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The Farm on the Hill

Published on by Otto von Münchow17 Comments

I have known this farming family since 1996. I have visited them almost every time I have travelled to Cuba. I have lived with them, shared meals with them, and followed their lives through good times and bad. Over the years, they have become much more than people I return to photograph. I consider them my second family.

It was pure coincidence that I first met Katalina and Miguel Nuñez, an elderly couple who lived and worked on their farm in the Viñales Valley. My friend Sven and I were simply roaming through the valley when we came across a beautiful farm perched on a hilltop, a couple of miles north of the town that shares its name with the valley.

The landscape was sweeping and magnificent. We simply had to stop and take it in. That spontaneous detour became the beginning of a relationship that has lasted for thirty years.

Today, the farm is run by El Norte, Katalina and Miguel’s son. Two other sons and a daughter also live on the farm. They help their brother when they can, while holding full-time jobs in the local community. There is always work to be done on a farm, and these days there is more than ever.

As I wrote in my last post, Cuba is experiencing what I believe is the worst crisis I have witnessed during all my years of visiting the country. There are daily blackouts, hardly any fuel, rationing, and shortages of almost everything needed to maintain even a simple life. At least my family in Viñales produces enough to support themselves. They are not going hungry.

But that does not mean life is easy.

Life on the farm has always been a struggle. The family is poor, but they have never been people to complain. They work, they adapt, and they get on with it. Yet when there is no fertilizer, when there is no transport, when markets have collapsed and fuel is almost impossible to find, even the most self-sufficient family feels the pressure.

Perhaps that is what makes returning to them so important to me. Their lives are not an abstraction or a statistic about Cuba’s economic crisis. I know these people. I know the farm. I have watched children grow up, seen older generations disappear, and returned year after year to the same landscape.

Last week, I finished writing the extensive article about Cuba that I mentioned in my previous post. I also finally completed editing and processing all the photographs I made during my latest visit, including the couple of thousand images I took of my family in Viñales.

After spending so much time with the photographs, I find myself returning to the same feeling I have had throughout all these years. The pictures are important, but the relationship behind them is even more so.

These photographs are not simply photographs of a Cuban farming family. They are fragments of a relationship that has grown over almost three decades. They are people I have returned to again and again, and a place that has become part of my own history. This is what I hope the photographs convey.

Writing Cuba

Published on by Otto von Münchow10 Comments

I have finally started working my way through the thousands of photographs I made over the summer. First out is Cuba, where I spent the end of June and beginning of July documenting a country that seems to be standing on the edge.

As always, the process begins with the least inspiring part of the work. Captioning photographs, adding keywords, organizing files and making sure everything is searchable and properly archived is necessary, but hardly exciting. It is the kind of work that reminds you photography is not only about making pictures. There is also the long and often invisible labour that follows afterwards.

Fortunately, that part is now behind me. What remains is the enjoyable work: editing and processing the photographs. The editing process is well under way, and as always it requires both patience and distance. Finding the strongest photographs among thousands of frames is rarely straightforward. Some images reveal themselves immediately. Others need time. Often I have to revisit the same photographs several times before I know whether they belong in the final selection or not.

It is a slow process, but one I genuinely enjoy.

At the same time, I have been working on something else. Alongside the editing, I have started writing a major story about the current situation in Cuba. It will be one of the most extensive articles I have written in quite some time. And I am doing something I almost never do.

I am writing it without an assignment. For a freelancer, producing work on spec is not sustainable. Normally, there needs to be a commission before investing this amount of time and effort. But this trip was different from the outset. I travelled to Cuba as part of a personal project, and I deliberately chose not to tie myself to any editorial obligations.

Now that I am home, however, I feel compelled to tell the story.

Whether the article is eventually published remains uncertain. My hope is that one of the larger Norwegian Sunday supplements will be interested. But even if no editor says yes, the work still has value. Writing forces me to organise my thoughts and make sense of what I witnessed.

And what I witnessed was deeply troubling.

The situation in Cuba is difficult to describe without sounding alarmist. Yet almost everyone I spoke with expressed the same sense of exhaustion and despair. The country’s problems are no longer occasional disruptions or temporary setbacks. They have become the fabric of everyday life.

This is how the article begins:

“I would have served you a cafecito, but the power is out. It’s been out all day.”

Sonia Bueno is distraught. Like most Cubans these days.

We are sitting in her apartment in Old Havana. Every window stands wide open, yet the apartment she shares with her adult son is stiflingly hot.

A large fan stands in a doorway. Motionless.

The temperature must have climbed well above 35 degrees Celsius. Sonia wipes a bead of sweat from her forehead and looks at me. In the corner of the living room stands the refrigerator. Water is dripping from the freezer.

“What am I supposed to do? For the past six months, we’ve only had electricity for a few hours a day—if at all. Yesterday we had power for just twenty minutes. How are we supposed to survive?”

Sonia shrugs helplessly. Her tired eyes drop to the floor. She wrings her hands before looking up again.

“¡No es fácil!”

“It’s not easy.”

It was a phrase I heard over and over again during Cuba’s Special Period, when I first visited the island in 1991. Back then, Cuba was going through the worst crisis in its history. There were blackouts, rationing, and shortages of almost everything.

Now the country is experiencing it all over again. Only much worse.

As I continue editing the photographs and writing the story, I find myself returning to the same question. How do you convey a crisis that has become ordinary? How do you photograph and write about a reality that people wake up to every day?

Perhaps that is what both photography and writing are ultimately about. Trying to make visible what risks becoming invisible through repetition.

The photographs are slowly beginning to reveal themselves. So is the story. Whether it eventually appears in a newspaper or not, I know one thing already: Cuba is not finished telling its story, and I suspect I am not finished listening.

Beyond the Comfort Zone

Published on by Otto von Münchow5 Comments

Two intense and challenging weeks of workshops have come to an end. The first in Naples, Italy, the second in Lillehammer, Norway. For the first time in a while, I can finally take a deep breath.

Don’t get me wrong. I love teaching workshops, and I enjoy the challenge that comes with them. But after weeks of concentrated work, long days, and constant engagement, it feels good to sit down for a moment without any immediate demands waiting around the corner.

In Naples, the greatest challenge was the heat. It was not the extreme temperatures that have plagued southern Europe throughout the summer, but it was certainly hot enough to take its toll when spending most of the day out on the streets with a camera in hand.

Yet the weather was never the real challenge.

Whether in Naples or Lillehammer, where the temperatures were much kinder, the participants faced something far more demanding: themselves. For many, street photography means confronting a very basic fear—the fear of approaching strangers. The fear of being rejected. The fear of being seen. And for those who have never tried it before, the idea of walking up to a complete stranger and asking for a photograph can feel almost impossible.

When I teach, I see part of my role as helping participants move beyond their comfort zone. There is little point in attending a workshop if you only continue doing what you have always done. Growth rarely happens inside the comfort zone. If you want your photography to develop, you have to be willing to step beyond what feels safe and familiar.

One of the ways I challenge participants is by encouraging them to approach people they would like to photograph. The initial reaction is often reluctance. Sometimes it is a firm no. But then something interesting happens.

When I take them along and ask on their behalf, or simply stand beside them as moral support, they discover that most people are far more approachable than they imagined. The feared rejection often never materializes. Instead, conversations begin, portraits are made, and suddenly a whole new world of photographic possibilities opens up.

Last year, one participant was adamantly opposed to the idea. He was convinced he would never be able to approach strangers. So we went out together. I asked people he found interesting if they would be willing to be photographed by him. Most said yes.

Slowly, the mental barrier that had seemed so immovable began to crack.

This year he returned for the Lillehammer workshop. Watching him work was remarkable. He moved confidently through the streets, approaching people with ease and returning with a collection of beautiful portraits. The obstacle that had once dominated his photography was simply gone. In fact, he had become so comfortable with the process that I had to challenge him in entirely different ways.

But the most memorable moment of the Lillehammer workshop came from another participant. On the second morning, just before we were due to begin, I received a text message. He told me he was already on the train home. He simply could not face the prospect of approaching strangers.

Fortunately, I managed to persuade him to get off at the next station and return to Lillehammer. Later that afternoon, we spent an hour walking the streets together. There was no pressure. No forcing. We simply took things one step at a time. Eventually he approached one person. Then another. And then another. Suddenly, something shifted.

By the end of the workshop, he was beaming. He had discovered a way of photographing that he never thought would be available to him. More importantly, he had discovered that the obstacle had never been the strangers he wanted to photograph. It had been his own fear. He told me he would continue working this way when he returned home.

Moments like that remind me why I teach.

Of course, workshops are about photography. We talk about composition, storytelling, editing, visual language, and all the other ingredients that go into making stronger images. But sometimes the most important lesson has very little to do with cameras. Sometimes it is simply about discovering that you are capable of more than you thought. And when I see that happen—when someone steps beyond a fear that has held them back for years and suddenly finds a new way of seeing and working—it still makes my heart pound.

Between Inspiration and Exhaustion

Published on by Otto von Münchow9 Comments

Time is flying by. It is hard to keep up with everything.

A little over a week ago, I was in Seattle preparing to fly back to my hometown of Bergen. Last week, I attended the photojournalism festival Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan, France. And as you read this, I have just arrived in Naples, Italy, where I will spend the week teaching a workshop together with my friend and colleague Sven Creutzmann.

The last few weeks have been something of a whirlwind. I enjoy being on the move, but there is no denying that it can be exhausting. Particularly last week, with the heat wave sweeping across southern Europe. In Perpignan, temperatures reached 37°C (99 degrees F). It is difficult to stay focused and energetic when simply walking through the streets becomes a challenge.

Nevertheless, Perpignan was as inspiring as ever.

One of the great pleasures of Visa pour l’Image is meeting colleagues, making new acquaintances, and unexpectedly reconnecting with people from the past.

This year brought one such surprise.

While wandering through the streets of Perpignan, I suddenly ran into an old friend and fellow student from my days at the International Center of Photography in New York in 1989 and 1990. Back then, we were close friends and even shared an apartment during our studies. We stayed in touch for a few years afterwards, but eventually life took us in different directions. Living in Norway and Switzerland respectively, it became increasingly difficult to stay connected.

And then, more than thirty years later, we unexpectedly met again on a street corner in Perpignan.

It was one of those rare moments when time seems to collapse. Within minutes, it felt as though no time had passed at all. We were back to discussing photography, life, and old memories as if we had last spoken only a few weeks ago.

Photographically, Visa pour l’Image is always a mixed experience. There are exhibitions and projections that are truly outstanding, while others leave me wondering how they found their way into such a prestigious festival. The challenge is to find the work that deserves your attention—and there is certainly plenty of that.

At its core, Visa pour l’Image remains a festival dedicated to photojournalism, and particularly to hard news coverage. War, conflict, humanitarian crises, poverty, and human suffering dominate much of the programme. I photograph my share of difficult stories as well, but after days immersed in images of catastrophe, something curious happens. You begin to feel saturated. One conflict starts to resemble another. One tragedy blends into the next. The emotional impact risks becoming diluted simply through repetition.

That is why it was so refreshing to encounter the work of Paolo Roversi.

His photographs from India offered something entirely different. Rather than documenting events, he invites the viewer into a dreamlike world where India emerges somewhere between shadow and light, reality and imagination. The photographs are lyrical, poetic, and deeply personal. They remind us that photography does not always have to explain the world. Sometimes it can simply evoke it.

Those were among the images that stayed with me long after I left the exhibition halls.

Now, as I begin teaching here in Naples, I find myself carrying those impressions with me. One of the great gifts of festivals such as Visa pour l’Image is that they refill your creative reserves. You arrive hoping to see good photography, but you leave with new ideas, new questions, and often a renewed sense of curiosity.

Perhaps that is what keeps many of us returning year after year. Not simply the photographs themselves, but the conversations, the encounters, the unexpected reunions, and the occasional image that changes the way you look at the world.

As the workshop begins this week in Naples, I hope to pass some of that inspiration on to the participants. After all, photography is not only about making pictures. It is also about learning to see—and sometimes all it takes is one conversation, one meeting, or one photograph to remind us how much there still is to discover.

This Week’s Book Read

Paolo Roversi is best known for his fashion photography, but in In the Smell of India, his most recent book, he moves far beyond the world of fashion. Here, he expresses his wonder and fascination with a humanity far removed from Western perceptions, creating a deeply personal and poetic portrait of India.

Roversi presents an India that feels both mystical and timeless, rendered in the sepia tones and powdery colours that have become his visual signature. Through subtle variations of light and delicate modelling of form, he creates a dreamlike world suspended somewhere between reality and imagination.

Decrepit marble palaces, small shops, narrow alleys populated by donkeys and sacred cows, and sandy landscapes veiled in amber light all become part of Roversi’s visual universe. Above all, however, it is the people who command attention. Women, men, and children appear throughout the book, photographed with the gentleness, sensitivity, and elegance that characterize Roversi’s work. Whether absorbed in everyday tasks or standing before the camera, they form a rich and multifaceted portrait of India.

Published alongside Pier Paolo Pasolini’s celebrated text The Smell of India, Roversi’s photographs invite readers into a country that feels both mysterious and familiar. The book is more than a photographic journey; it is also a dialogue across time between two Italian artists and their encounters with India.

An especially moving aspect of the project comes at the end of the book, where Roversi recounts his search for Revi, an orphan whom Pasolini had met during his travels. An appendix includes a selection of Pasolini’s letters as well as an interview published in French for the first time.

In the Smell of India is a beautiful and contemplative work. Rather than documenting India, Roversi evokes it, creating a poetic interpretation that lingers in the mind long after the final page has been turned.

Get Paolo Roversi’s In the Smell of India on some European Amazon stores

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Back to the Everyday

Published on by Otto von Münchow6 Comments

After the great adventure down the Yukon River in July and early August, the last couple of weeks have been decidedly mundane. Nothing particularly dramatic has happened. There has been work, editing, and preparations for future workshops. In many ways, it feels almost like an anticlimax after the intensity of life on the river.

At the same time, it has been good to settle down for a while. To sleep in the same bed every night. Not to break camp each morning, get into a canoe, and start paddling another day with sore muscles.

There is one thing I miss from the trip, though, the total immersion in the present.

As always when spending time in the wilderness, the mind becomes wonderfully free of the usual clutter. There are no emails to answer, appointments to remember, or household chores waiting somewhere in the background. Your concerns become immediate and tangible. Find the best route down the river. Look for a place to land. Set up camp. Make food. Get some sleep. Then do it all over again.

It is a simple life, but there is something deeply nurturing about it. Perhaps because there is so little room for anything that doesn’t matter right now.

Back home, I have started working my way through the thousands of photographs I made during the Yukon trip. The first stage of the process—keywording and captioning every image—is time-consuming. As I write this, on Thursday last week, that part is finally done. It is necessary work, but probably the part of editing I find most tedious.

Now comes the more enjoyable part.

I can finally start looking at the photographs as photographs. Selecting the strongest images, trying to understand what I actually brought home, and then processing the ones that make the cut. Normally, I end up with around ten percent of everything I shoot, which in this case means a couple of hundred photographs.

And I haven’t even started on the thousands of images I made in Cuba immediately before heading north to the Yukon. There is never a shortage of photographs. Only time to deal with them.

The last couple of weeks haven’t been entirely devoted to work, though. A few times, my partner and I have gone to outdoor summer concerts at the local zoo. No major names, but lovely music and a wonderful atmosphere. Sometimes it is good simply to sit down and listen.

One of the musicians who caught me completely by surprise was Jesse Welles, a singer-songwriter I had never heard before. His music moves between folk, Americana, and protest songs, carried by a gravelly voice, often acoustic guitar, and sharp social commentary. There are obvious echoes of the great American troubadours, but he has a character of his own.

It was one of those unexpected discoveries that makes a summer evening worthwhile.

And now, as you read this, I have just returned from another four-day adventure—a backpacking trip into the Hoh rainforest on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula in the US. I can’t tell you anything about it yet because this post was written before leaving. But I will return to it next week, with photographs.

That is perhaps the rhythm of life as a photographer. One journey ends, the photographs from it remain waiting to be understood, everyday life settles in again, and then another journey begins.

The Yukon is behind me, Cuba is still waiting on my hard drives, and the Hoh rainforest has now become the next chapter. There is always something to photograph, something to edit, something to prepare for, and occasionally something completely unexpected to discover.

Life goes on. Not always dramatically. Not always at the pace of a river. But always moving—and, if I’m paying attention, always offering something worth looking at. The photos this time is from the Jesse Welles concert and a Can Can show we attended after having arrived in Dawson City. Worlds apart and still both parts of the world.

This Week’s Book Read

The Echo of Our Voices is the fourth volume in Nick Brandt’s ambitious series The Day May Break, and perhaps its most intimate chapter yet. This time, Brandt turns his camera towards one of the world’s most extreme environments, the arid deserts of Jordan, where displaced Syrian families live in a landscape shaped by water scarcity, displacement and uncertainty.

The book is a deeply moving meditation on displacement, climate change and human resilience. Brandt’s striking black-and-white portraits show his subjects standing or embracing on stacked wooden cubes, transforming them into almost monumental figures. There is something powerful about this visual device. People who are often invisible in society are given a physical and visual presence that is impossible to overlook.

There is a subtle shift from Brandt’s earlier work in The Day May Break. The grief and warning that have characterized previous volumes are still present, but here the emphasis seems to have moved towards solidarity, tenderness and strength. The photographs suggest that when almost everything else has been taken away, human connection remains.

That duality is what makes the images so compelling. There is vulnerability in the portraits, but also a quiet sense of defiance. The people are not presented simply as victims of circumstances beyond their control. They retain their dignity and presence, standing together against an environment that seems determined to strip both away.

The book itself is a beautifully produced physical monograph, published by Skira Arte. The reproduction of Brandt’s black-and-white photographs is exceptional, allowing the subtle tonal variations and textures to come through with remarkable clarity. Contextual essays, including one by Syrian novelist Samar Yazbek, add another layer to the work.

The Echo of Our Voices is ultimately more than a book about displacement or climate change. It is a book about what remains when so much has been lost—and about the strength we can find in one another.

Get Nick Brandt’s The Echo of Our Voices on Amazon

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The River Is Still with Me

Published on by Otto von Münchow16 Comments

Sixteen days on the Yukon River. 715 kilometres, or 444 miles. Through an immense and expansive wilderness, with almost no other human beings around except for the occasional paddler. Mostly it was just us, our two canoes, and our ability to deal with whatever the river decided to throw at us.

That all ended last week when our two canoes finally arrived in Dawson City, tired, happy, dirty—and more than a little relieved.

It was a truly extraordinary journey. At times it was hard. Some days we had to cover considerably more than our planned average of around 45 kilometres. On other days, it was simply a matter of waking up with exhausted bodies and knowing we still had many hours of paddling ahead of us.

Then there was the wind.

A strong headwind makes a surprisingly big difference, even when travelling “downhill” on a river. And sometimes the water itself became a challenge. Lake Laberge, which we had to cross, is almost 50 kilometres long and can become seriously choppy when the wind picks up. Out there, with no riverbanks to shelter behind, we had to concentrate fully on keeping the canoes moving in the right direction.

Now I am back in Seattle, sitting at my desk and looking at another couple of thousand photographs waiting to be edited and processed. These come on top of the photographs and video clips I brought back from Cuba only a month ago.

Life as a photographer can be challenging. There is never enough time.

Taking photographs while paddling was a challenge in itself. Often I simply couldn’t get into the position I wanted. The river determines where you are, and if you stop paddling, you immediately begin drifting. Sometimes that was not a safety issue, but it was enough to destroy the composition I had in mind.

And there were moments when photography was simply out of the question. When the water became rough or we needed to manoeuvre the canoes, both my partner and I had to concentrate entirely on paddling. No photograph was worth compromising that.

Still, I think I managed to come home with some good images—photographs that, hopefully, convey something of the spirit of the journey as well as the vastness of the landscape. Whether I am right remains to be seen. I have barely started going through them.

For this trip, I used two small point-and-shoot cameras. While paddling, I relied on an Olympus Tough. When we were ashore, I used a Sony RX100. The reason for carrying two cameras was simple. The Sony is considerably better and more versatile, but it has one rather important disadvantage for this kind of trip. It isn’t waterproof.

The Olympus, on the other hand, could be used without worrying about water. That mattered when I had only seconds to make a photograph.

I therefore set it up for quick and uncomplicated handling. When I wanted a wide depth of field, I used aperture priority at f/11. For a shallower depth of field, I switched to program mode, knowing that the camera would favour a faster shutter speed. If I needed to guarantee a fast shutter speed, I used shutter priority at 1/1000 second.

Then it was simply point and shoot.

I used essentially the same settings on the Sony, even though I generally had more time to photograph when we were ashore. I wanted to keep the process simple and, more importantly, consistent. Having two cameras that behaved more or less the same way meant I could concentrate on the photograph rather than the technology.

Power was another concern—or at least I thought it would be.

With no opportunity to recharge anything along the river, I brought a substantial supply of batteries for both cameras. I could have brought a power bank, but I figured batteries would be simpler, lighter to manage, and faster to replace.

In the end, I was surprised by how little I actually used. Despite the thousands of photographs I made, I needed only two or three batteries for each camera.

The whole adventure was challenging from beginning to end. Afterwards, several people have asked me if I would do it again.

No. I wouldn’t. But if I had known beforehand exactly what the journey would entail, I would still have gone. That probably says everything.

I don’t need to paddle the Yukon again. There are too many other rivers in the world, too many landscapes I haven’t seen, too many places where the current is carrying me somewhere new.

For now, though, I have the river waiting for me on my hard drives. The photographs shown here are more or less randomly selected. I haven’t properly worked my way through the thousands of frames yet, so I don’t really know what I brought home.

Perhaps that is the most exciting part. The journey may be over, but the photographs are only beginning to tell me what it was.

At the Pace of a River

Published on by Otto von Münchow10 Comments

As you read this, I am already somewhere on the Yukon River in Canada.

For the next sixteen days, three friends and I will be paddling from Whitehorse to Dawson City, following one of the most legendary waterways in North America. It is a journey of roughly 715 kilometres (444 miles), through landscapes forever associated with the Klondike Gold Rush.

When gold was discovered in the Klondike region in 1896, the Yukon became the route into one of history’s great gold rushes. Within a year, more than 100,000 hopeful prospectors had set out for the north, lured by dreams of fortune. Only a fraction ever reached the goldfields, and even fewer found the riches they had imagined. Today, the frenzy has long since faded, but the river still carries the echoes of that remarkable chapter in history.

Our expedition will be considerably less dramatic.

With sixteen days at our disposal, there is no need to hurry. While experienced racers can cover the distance in only a few days, we have the luxury of travelling at the river’s own pace. The goal is not to arrive as quickly as possible, but to experience the landscape, the wildlife, and the quiet rhythm that only a long journey by canoe can offer.

It has been twenty years since I last paddled in Canada. Back then, we explored the rugged coastline off Vancouver Island by sea kayak. This time the setting is entirely different. Instead of salt water and the Pacific Ocean, we will spend more than two weeks on an inland river, travelling in two canoes, four friends sharing both the work and the experience.

There is something deeply satisfying about moving through a landscape under your own power—significantly helped by a fast moving river, though. Day after day, the pace becomes almost meditative. Distances are measured not in hours behind a steering wheel, but in paddle strokes, changing weather, and the search for the next campsite. Time seems to slow, and the world quietly becomes a little simpler.

For the next couple of weeks, I will be completely offline. Once we leave Whitehorse, there will be no reliable communication with the outside world. That means no new blog posts until I return to what we like to call civilisation sometime during the second week of August.

Until then, I hope you enjoy the best of the summer.

The photographs accompanying this post were made during that kayak expedition along the coast of Vancouver Island twenty years ago. When I return, they will hopefully be joined by a new collection of images from another remarkable corner of Canada—this time from the banks of the Yukon River.

One Frame at a Time

Published on by Otto von Münchow14 Comments

I am back from a blistering and, at times, despairing Cuba.

The country stands closer to the edge than I have ever witnessed during the thirty-five years I have been returning. Above all, it is the collapse of electricity and transportation that is suffocating everyday life. Power cuts lasting days are no longer exceptional, and finding transportation has become both difficult and prohibitively expensive. The Cuban people are enduring hardships unlike anything I have seen before. Even the Special Period following the collapse of the Soviet Union seems less severe by comparison.

Photographing was challenging as well, though for different reasons.

The heat was relentless. Cuba has always been hot during the summer months, but this year it felt different. Climate change is no longer an abstract concept or a prediction for the future. It is something you feel in your body from the moment you step outside. The heat has become another burden in a country already struggling under the weight of so many others.

One morning, I followed a farmer through his daily routine. Before ten o’clock, I was still able to keep pace with him. As he milked his small herd in the soft morning light, everything seemed to fall into place. The light was beautiful, the work unhurried, and I came away with photographs I was genuinely pleased with.

Then the sun climbed higher.

When the farmer began ploughing one of his fields, I followed, hoping to continue photographing. After no more than ten minutes, I had to stop. Despite drinking water continuously, I was completely drained. I managed to make a few more photographs before admitting defeat and seeking whatever shade I could find.

The farmer, meanwhile, continued behind the plough for another couple of hours.

All I could feel was admiration.

It is difficult to comprehend the physical endurance required simply to get through an ordinary working day under such conditions. And unlike me, he cannot return to an air-conditioned room or board a plane home when the assignment is over.

That perspective is important.

Yes, the trip was demanding, and photographing often felt like a struggle. But my discomfort was temporary. I could leave. I have returned to a place where electricity is taken for granted, transportation functions, and the heat is manageable. The people I photographed remain behind, facing not only an economic crisis, but also a climate that makes an already difficult life even harder.

Now another kind of work begins.

On my hard drives are nearly 3,000 photographs and video clips waiting to be edited and processed. At the moment, the task feels almost overwhelming. But I know from experience that the only way forward is one frame at a time. Somewhere among those thousands of files are the photographs that best tell the story of this journey. Finding them will take time, patience, and perhaps a little distance.

Only then will I truly know what I brought home from Cuba.

A Return at a Difficult Time

Published on by Otto von Münchow7 Comments

As some of you may know, I have been following developments in Cuba for a long time. My first encounter with the country was back in 1991, at the beginning of what the Cuban authorities called the Special Period. It was a time of hardship, uncertainty, and remarkable endurance. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union—which had subsidized the Cuban economy for decades—the foundations of everyday life were suddenly shaken. The consequences were felt by every Cuban.

As you read this, I will be returning for what will be my twenty-fifth visit to the island.

The timing feels significant. Sometime after the summer, my book about Cuba will finally be published. I have mentioned the project before, and although this trip comes too late to become part of the book itself, I nevertheless feel compelled to go. After following the country for so many years, I need to see for myself what is happening.

Over time, Cuba gradually recovered from the worst years of the Special Period. Tourism became one of the engines that helped keep the economy afloat. But then came the pandemic, and once again the ground shifted beneath people’s feet. Since then, conditions have steadily deteriorated. Economic difficulties have deepened, shortages have become more severe, and everyday life has grown increasingly complicated for ordinary Cubans. The tightening of the US blockade earlier this year has made the conditions pretty much unbearable.

Everything I hear suggests that this is even more challenging than what the country experienced in 1990s.

It will undoubtedly be a difficult trip. Transportation is scarce. Electricity is unreliable. Friends and contacts tell me that power outages have become a defining feature of daily life. In the summer heat of Havana, where temperatures often climb above 35 degrees Celsius, even simple tasks become exhausting when the electricity disappears for hours at a time. Even Havana gets maybe only 25 minutes a day with electricity. Food remains available, but prices continue to rise, placing an ever-greater burden on families already struggling to make ends meet.

Yet this is precisely why I feel the need to go.

Photography has always been my way of understanding the world. Returning to Cuba is not simply about documenting events or collecting images. It is about listening, observing, and trying to grasp how people navigate circumstances that, from the outside, can seem almost impossible. Over the years, I have seen the country through periods of hope, disappointment, adaptation, and resilience. Now I find myself returning once more at a moment when many describe the situation as critical.

Of course, I arrive as a visitor. That distinction matters. No matter how uncomfortable the conditions may become, I remain in the privileged position of being able to leave again. The people I photograph and spend time with do not have that option.

For the next two and a half weeks, I will largely be off the grid. With limited electricity comes limited communication. There may be long silences.