Montier Photo Festival

Presentation

Martin JOHANSEN

  France

  http://www.martinjohansen.com

  Martin N. Johansen is a danish photographer, writer and nature guide. He has devoted most of his career to telling the beauty of the natural world and the harmonious relationship that man has with nature. From an early age, he photographed the landscape with a nikon FM, his first film camera. He then began developing prints in his own darkroom. A few years later he published his first pictures and in various outdoor magazines in Scandinavia. Over the years, he has made many trips to all corners of the world, on photographic assignments, documenting in particular the Arctic and the North Atlantic regions. His photographs have been published in numerous magazines in France and internationally, including Le Figaro, Outside and Geo among others. Martin is the author of 8 books on nature.

Exposition

 

In a remote corner of the Indian region of Nagaland near the Burmese border, lives the Yimchunger tribe.They are one of the 16 ethnic groups living in this territory. They are considered some of the last ‘honey hunters’ of the region. Every spring and autumn, a smalll group of men leave their villages to collect wild honey along steep rocky cliffs. The giant honeybee (Apis dorsata) can measure up to 2.5 cm. Only four of the seven species of honeybees listed in the world are kept commercially. Dwarf and giant honeybees practice open-air nesting, directly on the steep cliffs found in the semi-tropical forests of Nagaland, making it difficult to keep them in man-made hives. Some nests reach 1.5 meters wide. A colony can have 50,000 bees and a nest can contain up to 20 kg of pure honey.