Travelling is the most intriguing part of a person’s life because it allows them to go on a social detox. Especially if you have planned to travel with your family, the vacation experience is going to be fun. However, cutting off from social life and relying on conventional laps can take a big toll on your tour if you have plans to explore different places in a short time. So when you pack your bag, don’t forget to carry your tech-friendly travel accessory. They’ll help you in keeping control over the travel noise and breathe life into your phone when the battery is dying. Here we will sift you through the must-have travel tech accessories:

1.      External Battery

Today, external battery charges are omnipresent. Secondly, because they are available in bigger sizes, one can easily buy a few of them for the entire trip. If you ask any of your friends, they will guide you through packing the external battery as a must-have accessory. Because many people love to explore mountainous regions during vacation, it becomes crucial to have a battery when you can’t find a charger slot every few miles up. External batteries don’t weigh much and can easily contour in your pocket. Make sure to read the customer reviews if you have plans to purchase the external battery from the web.

2.      A Bluetooth Speaker That is Waterproof

If you are setting off on a beach vacation, not having a waterproof speaker is going to make you regret it. Now, with much advancement in technology, you think of something, and it is already available out there. Beach is a fun place to go, so you must not overlook carrying a waterproof Bluetooth speaker in your bag. This way, you can enjoy your favorite track while swimming in the water. Another strong reason to carry a Bluetooth speaker is its tiny size. You can carry it anywhere you want without worrying about its weight.

3.      A Digital Watch

If you’re travelling to a different country, it is imperative that you wear a digital watch. Although they have been around for the last four decades, still many people overlook this option when it comes to travelling. Now, digital watches are better than ever and come with a plethora of interesting features. Suppose if you want to find the kids attraction near your hotel, a digital watch will quickly sift you through the chaos to your desired destination. You can also wear a fitness tracker when travelling with family.

4.      A Selfie Stick

Now selfie sticks have become a permanent companion for travelers. For those who love to encapsulate their entire trip, selfie sticks can easily help them in recording vlogs and interesting videos. However, you need to find a Bluetooth selfie stick because it can get paired with any phone. If you settle for the conventional selfie stick with a long cable, you will have to struggle with the wires throughout the journey. A selfie stick is portable and is light in weight, which makes it the perfect travel accessory.

5.      A Waterproof Phone Cover

There are many instances when your phone will slip from your hand. Secondly, if you have the plan to visit the beach or a place where water is in abundance, a waterproof phone cover will protect your device from getting damaged. Waterproof phone covers protect the mobile from getting drenched in water if they fall in it. However, when you decide to buy such a cover from the web, don’t forget to check the customer reviews. They will help you in weighing the pros and cons of buying from a particular seller. Want something fancy and sustainable? How about iPhone 13 cases by Carved?

6.      A Streaming Stick

If the hotel room is going to be your home for the next few days, you can’t forget the streaming stick at home. Especially when you’re obsessed with sifting through Netflix and Youtube, it becomes imperative to carry the streaming stick. The reason why many people prefer streaming sticks is because of its speed. Unlike the traditional internet or satellite connection, a streaming stick channels the content without any distortion. Secondly, a streaming stick doesn’t take much space in your bag. So it’s the most portable thing you’re going to carry.

7.      Headphones

Are you in love with music? Do you like listening to your favorite track while walking through the local streets? Buy headphones before you decide to fly with your luggage. You never know if you’ll get the best accessory for your phone when you land in a new country. It is best if you settle for the noise-cancelling headphones because they can curate the voice from any distortions. Headphones are imperative for your trip because they eradicate the chaos of carrying a wired ear device. So don’t forget to pack them in your luggage before setting off.

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We have a tendency to go about traveling as we go about our busy daily lives: frantically ticking off our to-do list to make sure we make the most of our time – and have a lot of Instagrammable pictures to show for it. But more and more people are realizing that making the best of our time might mean something completely different: it requires us to slow down, so we can really appreciate the places we visit.

The best part: while traveling slow gives us a more meaningful experience, it also maximizes benefits for local communities and the environment. With traveling slow, everybody wins. (I even learned what it takes to build a successful NGO).

My travel burn-out (yes, it’s a thing)

I learned to travel slow by experience, long before I knew there was such a thing as a slow travel movement. In January 2017 I quit my job, sold my belongings, and bought a one-way ticket to Bangkok: I was off on a long backpacking trip through Asia. Although I had all the time in the world, I felt the need to see and do as much as possible and moved around a lot, staying in one place only for a few days before moving on to the next.

While I had an amazing time at first, a few months into my trip I noticed I just wasn’t that excited for anything anymore. Another gorgeous waterfall? Mwah, I’ll pass. Another mesmerizing temple? Please, no. Was that a camel passing me by on the street just now? Ah well, what’s new. After the excitement of the first months of traveling wore off I was left with a feeling I had seen it all before. I had caught a serious case of travel fatigue.

I concluded it was time for a break from traveling and decided to look for a comfortable place to settle down for a while. I found the perfect spot on some remote beach on a Malaysian island and resolved to make no plans, but instead stay put as long as I felt like it, doing absolutely nothing remarkable. I ended up staying two months – and emerged from it with a new perspective on traveling.

During this time something incredible happened: I made amazing connections to other people, got a renewed appreciation for nature, and learned an awful lot about myself. These two months had more impact on me as a person than all the previous months of traveling together. From then on, I would not even bother with trying to see it all. Instead, I would focus on connecting to the places I visited – I chose quality over quantity.

Welcome to the slow travel movement

Later I learned that the new way of traveling I discovered actually has a name: it’s called slow travel. It’s part of an increasingly popular movement that includes other aspects of slow living, such as slow food and slow fashion.

It all started with the slow food movement, that originated in Rome in 1986, as a protest against the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in the city. Many Italians considered fast food an insult to the long-standing Italian culinary tradition. Journalist Carlo Petrini launched a culinary philosophy that embodied exactly the opposite of fast food: slow food. It stood for quality food, use of local ingredients, and preservation of traditional dishes, and emphasized the importance of enjoyment in buying, preparing, and sharing food – qualities that were being lost in fast-paced modern society.

All concepts related to slow living counter the prevailing notion that “faster is better”, which translates into a lifestyle that’s typically hurried, stressed, impatient, and superficial. Instead, slow living centers around living consciously, intentionally, mindfully, and deeply. It means taking the time to do things properly, thus creating a more meaningful and fulfilling experience. It’s about savoring the minutes, not counting them, and living a balanced life in a fast-paced world.

Applied to traveling, this means slowing down your pace in order to really immerse yourself in your environment and connect to places you visit. It means letting go of your schedule and allowing yourself to explore freely. It involves getting to know a place on a deeper level by connecting to local people and immersing yourself in the local culture. It’s about being open to new experiences and learning to appreciate different ways of life in all their complexity.

Back to the roots (why we travel in the first place)

Traveling slow makes all the more sense when you consider why people travel in the first place. Most of us travel to experience something we can’t experience back home. Personally, I set out to travel the world because I wanted to break free from my predictable life, my daily routines, and fixed patterns. I was aching to experience new and different things, to see what the world was like outside my little bubble, and get a glimpse of how other people lived their lives. I wanted to see the world to get a fresh perspective on life.

But how was I ever going to get a new perspective by sticking to a pre-arranged plan? That would only allow me to see the things I was expecting to see, the things I already knew existed. The only way to go beyond that and explore new, unknown territories, was to create space for the unplanned, the unexpected, the spontaneous. If you want your travel to mean something, to transform you, and to provide you with new insights – and it should! – you have to be willing to let go and explore with an open mind.

Traveling slow, by the way, doesn’t mean you must travel at a snail’s pace or have oceans of time at hand. Traveling slow, above all, is a mindset. It’s about having a basic habit of pacing yourself, taking as much time as you need to immerse yourself in a place, and prioritizing the quality of the experience. Whether you apply them during a gap year or a weekend break, the principles remain the same.

An ethical alternative to mass tourism

From the above, it naturally follows that slow travel provides a way more enriching and fulfilling experience than the kind of fast travel that sees a trip as a checklist or photo competition. But it gets better: slow travel doesn’t just benefit the traveler, but local communities and the environment as well.

Slow travel values connecting with local people and culture. In their search for authenticity, slow travelers tend to venture off the beaten trail and stay away from tourist hotspots, big chain resorts, and international restaurants. They’d rather explore the hidden gems, wander around local neighborhoods, stay at small guesthouses or homestays, and try traditional dishes at local eateries. They can’t be bothered with buying touristy souvenirs, but are interested in original local produce. By doing so, the money they spend supports local families and helps traditional local businesses thrive.

This stands in stark contrast to traditional mass tourism, which often does little to advance the interests of local communities. Mass tourism is big business, with profits often flowing to rich foreign investors and large companies that push local entrepreneurs out of business. Unrestricted tourism risks changing the character of places beyond recognition and threatening traditional ways of living. Overtourism can even make places unliveable for local residents. This obviously doesn’t do local communities justice – their interests should always come first.

Slow travel promotes a fair and ethical travel industry by empowering local businesses, supporting the preservation of the unique character of places, and taking the pressure off tourist hotspots suffering from the effects of overtourism. Beyond that, slow travel invites travelers and local people to engage in meaningful interactions, which promotes cultural exchange and cross-cultural understanding, for the benefit of all parties involved. Slow travel doesn’t capitalize on places, but aims to make places better – for local communities as well as travelers.

An eco-friendly travel style

In less obvious ways, slow travel also benefits the environment. A big environmental issue related to traveling concerns the emissions travelers inevitably produce by moving from A to B. While slow travelers might not be completely carbon neutral, they minimize their footprints by visiting a small amount of locations and traveling short distances, consequently using less transportation than fast travelers who hop between destinations all the time.

Slow travelers are also more likely to use public and shared forms of transport – such as trains and buses – which provide great opportunities to mingle with locals and are less damaging to the environment than flights or private cars. Plus, for slow travelers there is no better way to explore an area than by bicycle or foot, using all five senses to experience the place. After all, a slow traveler wants to enjoy every step of the way. From that point of view, sitting in planes is the ultimate bore.

In addition, slow travel puts less strain on the environment by emphasizing the consumption of regional produce and traditional food, typically prepared with locally sourced ingredients – meaning no products have to be imported from abroad just to cater to their culinary wishes (and really, why would you want to have a hamburger when you can eat the best pasta in the world anyway?).

An added bonus to slow travel

Last but not least, slow travel often has an unintentional but most welcome side-effect – at least for those of us who don’t have unlimited resources to fund our trips. Although slow travel can take many shapes and is suitable for different budgets, it can reduce the costs of traveling significantly. Cutting down on transportation costs and entry fees for expensive tourist attractions makes a big difference in your budget, and local guesthouses and eateries are often cheaper than luxury resorts and fancy restaurants.

Slow travel isn’t just friendly to people and the planet, but also to your wallet. If you still needed convincing of the benefits of slow travel – maybe this wins you over.

The post Traveling Slow Benefits You, Local Communities and the Environment  appeared first on Green Prophet.

English is my primary language, but even if I didn’t speak some Arabic, Greek and French too, I’d still be multilingual. As a dancer, dance educator and choreographer, I have always believed that I speak the universal language.

Movement is life. As living beings, we move even before making our presence known to the world. But some take the art and sport of movement as their life’s work, and use dance to assert their presence – and sometimes, help others to do so, as well.

Battery Dance, a professional company in downtown New York City, launched its Dancing to Connect programs over a decade ago. With these programs, company members travel abroad to conduct week-long dance workshops for underprivileged and at-risk youth. It very much reminds be of the work I myself did as an intern for the Hayatuna program launched by the Swedish NGO, Spiritus Mundi.

Instead of simply asking the children to watch and copy movement, the educators give the kids their own choreography wands, allowing and asking them to invent their own movement vocabulary. When I worked with the House of the Roses volunteer dance company, also a New York City-based organization, we employed this dance education method, and it proved extremely effective.

In creating their own movement to express emotions, ideas, etc., the children recognized in themselves greater potential and felt more closely tied to the project, more needed.

In Moving Stories, the documentary recently made following Dancing to Connect in Iraq, India, Romania and South Korea, we see the same trends and behaviors: dance stirring joy and awakening creativity in the young participants, and gaining appreciation by both the performers and their communities alike. It is clear that dance truly is a way we can communicate regardless of geographical or linguistic boundaries, and also that art is vital to our collective human culture.

Watch the Moving Stories trailer here.

I love what director, Rob Fruchtman said in an interview: “Dance is both a way in and a way out.” In addition to developing a greater understanding of oneself, dancing provides an outlet through which one can release stresses and emotions normally buried within.

It is so commendable that Battery Dance seeks out areas where there is the greatest need for something as freeing and healing as dance. The communities highlighted in Moving Stories have suffered more than most.

Gender violence, abuse, war and poverty are prevalent in the lives of these children. In India, for example, Dancing to Connect works with young women who have suffered sexual exploitation. In Romania, many of the children are gypsies who were raised in slums.

Working with kids is not always a walk in the park; attention strays, feelings get hurt, manners are lost, tempers flare, etc. Add to that the fact that the target population for these programs has been disproportionately affected by serious issues, and there you have a massive challenge. Battery Dance does not give up, though – another thing to admire.

After going through an intensive week filled with dance, the kids perform for an audience. It is clear, by the time of the shows, that the children have grown individually but also socially. A sense of accomplishment and pride is palpable. New friendships have been forged.

So much good comes out of Dancing to Connect, but a week is fleeting. Battery Dance works to make these programs sustainable by training people affiliated with the performing arts in these international locales under the company’s leaders during the workshops. The hope is that these close to home, native language speaking teams will grow the program, or something resembling it, as life continues, that the week with Battery Dance will not be remembered as a singular rare opportunity but as the start of much more.

The performing arts serve not only as entertainment; they also naturally lend themselves to therapy and act as a launchpad for social change.

As someone who has experienced their power firsthand, I can only hope that they will continue to be shared, and with growing zeal.

I read up on CMRubinWorld about Dancing to Connect. The title of the article there is, “The Global Search for Education: Is Now Our Time to Dance?” To which my answer is: Yes, it has always been our time to dance.

Top photo from Battery Dance website; next photo from The Dance Enthusiast

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The original ‘iPad’ measures roughly seven inches, except it’s thicker and made of wood, and comprises five overlaid carved rectangular panels coated with wax, Discovery reports.

“Yenikapı is a phenomenon with its 37 sunken ships and organic products,” Ufuk Kocabaş, director of Istanbul University’s department of marine archeology and the Yenikapi Shipwrecks Project, told Hurriyet Daily News. Scientists have been excavating the site for 10 years.

“I think these organic products are the most important feature of the excavations,” says Kocabaş.

Thought to have belonged to the ship’s captain for use as a tool, the wooden box has a sliding lid underneath that hides a carved plate.

“When you draw the sliding part, there are small weights used as an assay balance,” Kocabaş said. 

Related: Turkey’s Yalın Mimarlık Wins Ancient Troy Archaeological Museum Design Competition

An assay balance is a super-sensitive tool used to assess gold, silver and other precious metals in order to determine their value. This is an important tool for a merchant ship.

The ‘tablet’ had other uses as well.

Greek writing found carved in the wax suggests that it was used to take notes, and leather straps that hold the layers together made the box relatively portable as well. Nothing compared to modern iPads of course, but portable for 9th century Turkey.

Discovery writes that a “research team from Istanbul University is now restoring the ship, 60 percent of which has survived in good condition, with the aim of having her set sail again by 2015.”

Only this time, it is likely to have more “advanced” tools on board.

Image: The Byzantine notebook. Credit: Ufuk Kocabaş

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To sleep at Dar Ben Gacem is to spend a night in a bygone era. Located deep in the warren of alleyways and vendors that make up Tunis’ labyrinthian medina, this newly renovated artsy boutique hotel offers a tasteful glimpse of Ottoman period architecture and art.

Originally built as a hotel by wealthy merchants in the 17th century and occupied for 300 years by a family who sold perfume, the building eventually fell into disrepair.

Leila Ben Gacem and her family eventually bought the building and spent three years working with local heritage specialists, the Association de Sauvegarde de la Médina de Tunis, and architect Zoubeir Mouhli to restore the building to its original incarnation.

It was important to them that they preserve the historic detailing that contributes so richly to the medina’s unique architectural legacy, while still providing a modern setting that would appeal to tourists.

“I love staying in a place where you really feel its spirit and heritage,” Gacem told Brownbook Magazine.

“I really want to bring out what Tunisian artists have made, and whoever stays there, I want them to really feel the medina. And that’s the fascinating thing. You’re living in this little micro-palace and there’s a whole medina around you. You’re right there near the kasbah and souk.”

Related: Star Wars Fans Restore Luke Skywalker’s Home in Tunisia

Seven rooms are organized over two levels and around a central courtyard that is so typical of homes in the region – a feature that contributes to what Mouhli describes as “domestic introversion.” Each is adorned with colored wall tiles, carved plaster panels, and painted wooden ceilings.

The owners have made an effort to source their furnishings locally.

“Even the choice of furnishings reflects the local setting,” Brownbook reports. “If the detail wasn’t already present in the building, it was procured from one of the overstuffed antiques dealers which line the souk district of the medina, or made especially by local artisans.”

Not only does this lend an air of authenticity to their small boutique hotel, but it also promotes cottage industries and local Tunisians.

“We are social entrepreneurs,” writes Dar Ben Gacem on their website, “as we want to encourage tourism with a socio-economic edge by creating opportunities for micro and small businesses based in the medina; artisans, traders, tour guides, and chefs (mothers) that mastered their ‘cuisine’ by cooking for their families.”

Images via Dar Ben Gacem

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Danae Stratou, an installation artist, Alexandra Stratou, an industrial designer and architect, and architect Stella Constantinides formed the D.A.ST. Arteam in 1995 with the purpose of working together in the desert – a dream that the trio shared.

Two years later, they created Desert Breath, a series of conical sand mounds that form two spirals around a pool of water.

“In our mind’s eye the desert was a place where one experiences infinity,” they wrote on their project website.

“We were addressing the desert as a state of mind, a landscape of the mind. The point of departure was the conical form, the natural formation of the sand as a material.”

A site-specific work located in the eastern Sahara desert near the Red Sea in El Gouna (said to be MENA’s first carbon neutral city), the project comprises an area of 100,000 square meters.

The group used 8,000 cubic meters of sand to form both positive and negative “conical volumes,” which are precise – no easy feat in a dynamic desert where the winds are constantly shifting the sands.

Two interlocking spirals composed of these giant sand cones move out from a common center with a phase difference of 180 degrees, according to the group, surrounding a vessel with a 30 meter diameter that is filled to the brim with water.

“Located between the sea and a body of mountains at the point where the immensity of the sea meets the immensity of the desert, the work functions on two different levels in terms of viewpoint: from above as a visual image, and from the ground, walking the spiral pathway, a physical experience.”

It took two years for the D.A.ST. Arteam to complete this project, a time frame that is appropriate for a desert environment – so unforgiving, so taxing, and yet worthy of such deep reverence and respect.

:: My Modern Met

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Volkswagen did not officially move into the Middle East until 2005, when it established the Middle East regional office in Dubai. That office was tasked with overseeing 11 markets, and eventually a parts center for both VW and Audi was built in Dubai’s Jebel Ali free zone.

But the van had captured imaginations throughout the Middle East long before then and we have managed to dig up some photographs as a testament.

In the 1980s, Siemens provided employees with a VW van. The company car was no shiny road demon with waxed wheels, but a cool VW van that is just as easy to fix as it is to break down.

A group of nine Cambridge graduates set off on a three continent road trip – as the Cold War heated up – in two VW Kombis. That storied journey took them through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and on to Africa, and a book piled high with images and tales of wild encounters is still available for purchase today.

More recently, a photographer discovered a bright yellow VW van in Lebanon. It’s full of junk, including large water bottles, yet it somehow stands out among the other debris with a proud round face. And another came across a VW Kombi in Egypt sporting black and white zebra stripes; it seemed poised for an epic road trip.

Although VW vans are a fixture of life in Brazil, often masquerading as school buses and lunch trucks, sources told NPR that they have to shut down production because new vehicular safety requirements dictate that by 2014, all new vehicles must have air bags.

Special editions will be created throughout the last year of production, so, if you have never taken a road trip in a VW Van, or you’re thinking about investing in a vehicle that will last forever, maybe think about heading to Brazil – even before the next Olympic Games.

:: NPR

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Uri Jeremias peered over the roof of his restaurant back in 2001 and fell in love with a large abandoned building. It wasn’t for sale, but the restaurateur persevered, and eventually converted the Ottoman era palace into a resplendent boutique hotel.

Located in Acre, a well-documented UNESCO heritage site 150 miles north of Tel Aviv, The Efendi Hotel is named for the builders who were responsible for the last bit of construction done on what are actually two enjoined Ottoman palaces.

The southern structure is the Afifi House or Wizo House, according to the hotel website, while the northern structure is the Hamar or Shukri House, named for a family of musicians who once resided there.

“The two structures together contain within their walls the stories, secrets, mysteries, and enchantment that have been gathered for over 1,500 years.”

In the 18th century,  a soap manufacturing business thrived in the lower part of the house, according to its owner. The soap was made from olive oil and remnants of the factory can still be seen today.

Painstakingly restored with help from the local Antiquities Authority, the soaring buildings boast such gems as a 1878 Frescoe of Istanbul and a 400 year old claw bath.

Built on even older historical sites, the wine cellar dates back to the Crusades, and all of this history has been carefully preserved – sometimes with professional craftsmen flown in from Italy.

As We Heart notes, however, the historical aspects of the renovated palaces merged as one boutique hotel are carefully combined with fresh, modern finishings and furnishings.

The rooms have soaring, palatial ceilings, minimalist decor, as well as natural daylight that seeps deep into the hotel. Tall windows and regal balconies offer spectacular views of the nearby Mediterranean Sea.

Hundreds of fine local wines are available and it’s even possible to enjoy the traditional Muslim Hammam experience at the hotel, and some rooms have been adapted for people with disabilities.

Naturally one should expect to pay a pretty penny for the honor of wining, dining and sleeping at this beautifully-renovated boutique hotel, which means that only a small portion of the population will be able to enjoy the experience, but it might be worth a splurge for those who love design matched with history.

:: We Heart

Photography Assaf Pinchuk

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Marrakech is about to get a brand new building adjacent to the 12th century Menara Gardens on the city’s western edge.

Designed to attract the nine million or so international visitors who flock to Morocco for its vibrant street culture, storied deserts, and growing art and design scene, the The Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts will also become a local hub for education.

“Our goal is to take students from Morocco and the region, whose interests are in curatorial studies, connoisseurship, museum operations, development etc. and teach them both within the confines of the museum, interaction within their local communities and by sending them abroad to work at some of the worlds great institutions and universities the hands-on practice of museum science,” David Chipperfield Architects wrote in a design brief submitted to Dezeen.

A 6,000 square meter facility that strongly resembles vernacular Moroccan architecture, with ventilated ceiling panels and thick, well-insulated walls that block out the fierce desert sun, the museum will feature galleries, a theater, a cafe, bookshop, public and educational spaces.

Like a lot of Islamic architecture, the building will be organized around a central atrium, in which a rectangular pool of water brings tranquility to the ambitious space, and should cool it down as the prevailing breeze brushes past the water.

An assortment of hardy desert plants will surround the pool, fully integrating the art work displayed inside with Morocco’s unique context.

Not only restricted to photography, the museum will also curate works related to architecture and design, as well as fashion and culture.

“Through tightly disciplined acquisitions MMP+ will build a collection that will allow diverse use both in its exhibition program and education,” writes the design team. “We will also retain the flexibly to exhibit a broad range of works of art across all media.”

In so doing, the museum hopes to “broaden the artistic experience across cultural boundaries to form greater understanding and tolerance.”

Although Morocco still clings to its old world charm, deliberately – through government initiatives and organically, it has become a sought after destination among art and design enthusiasts.

Check out our past coverage of the Marrakech Biennale, which attracts a throng of creative work from across the globe – including many “green” projects that recognize the crucial link between art, humanity and nature.

While it is unclear when the new building will be completed, its museum is currently being hosted temporarily at El Badi Palace.

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In my last post I featured a photograph of an unused structure out in the desert near Dubai, a concrete amphitheatre. It turns out there was more to explore. 

Not far away is an area of desert that is difficult to access, being fenced off from most directions. I found a cross country way to visit the area as I was intrigued by a strange array of waterways and scars in the landscape.

I eventually found an old dusty sign that informed me the area was part of a defunct development once known as ‘The Arabian Canal’.

If you’ve never followed the google earth coordinates on my posts then this is the time to start ( 24°49’5.13″N  55° 7’50.13″E) This point will show you where the photograph was taken, but if you follow the desert north you will see a monumental earthwork that is being slowly swallowed by the desert.

The Arabian Canal was one of Dubai’s most environmentally shocking plans, an attempt to create tens of kilometres of valuable waterfront real estate in the middle of the virgin desert.

More on this subject soon!

Note from the editor: this photograph is part of a series called “Consumption” that seeks to document consumerism’s impact on the environment. From resource extraction and commodity production all the way down the supply chain to retail stores and waste processing facilities, Richard artfully examines what nature has come to mean in a world that depends on buying stuff.

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