Upturning the traditional conventions of fear-based environmental messaging about conserving areas that have become critical to global environmental health, Tales of Us tells their stories and the storiesof the people who live there in a totally new way.
Staging the local mythologies, legends and lore that form the basis of cultures that predate modern civilization by centuries or more in the natural – and ecologically critical — environments from which they sprang, and photographing them using the world’s most celebrated portrait photographers, Tales of Us communicates the magic and mystery of these little understood places in a way that empowers and uplifts, and that reaches people in other parts of the world who may otherwisenot hear the message.
Tales of Us sets out to change what has become a single story aboutplaces of great environmental import, and shows that there are in fact many stories around both.
The result is a cross-cultural and cross-continental collaboration between the people who live in often besieged areas of ecological importance, and a global audience of people whose decisions affect both, that is intended to prevent the loss of these all-important bastions of nature, and reveal their priceless value to the world and our communal future in it.
Congo Tales (Random House / Prestel, November 15th, 2018) and theshort film The Little Fish and the Crocodile are its first two such projects.
