Bishnoi community of Rajasthan in India are world's first environmentalists (since 1485) and live in complete harmony with their desert environment. They are ready to die to protect wild animals and trees.
"I had a dream: to travel the world with my camera".
In 2002, after a Masters degree in business and marketing from AGRO ParisTech, Franck Vogel decided to set off round the world without a penny, with only his backpack and his Canon camera. Over the course of a year, he took dirt tracks and roads, sailed seas and oceans by means of transport worthy of Jules Verne (dugout canoe, sailing boat, truck, camel, bike...and his legs). His main goal was to meet human beings.
After one year of hitch-hiking, 8000 pictures and a fabulous human adventure, he decided to jump into photojournalism. This "180-degree" life change was a new challenge as well as an awakening in his personal life and the part he wished to play on Earth.
Franck Vogel works as a freelance photographer on social and environmental issues. In 2004, in Albania, on assignment for Patrimoine sans Frontières (a French NGO dedicated to preserving endangered cultural heritage sites), he depicted the restoration of unique Orthodox churches in Voskopojë as well as the last of their founders, the Aromanians. This work has been shown in France and Albania in exhibitions, conferences, books and well-known magazines (Le Monde 2, Courrier International,...). In Ukraine, he took photos of Crimean Tatars and their tough post-soviet return to their motherland after having been deported by Stalin in May 1944. Since 2007, he has focused on the unique relationships between Nature and Human beings to show the World that it's possible to live in harmony. Most reportages depict the worst, Franck decided to bring hope. In India, his most recent story on the Bishnois - the world's first environmentalists - illustrates this perfectly. This work will be published in March 2009 in GEO magazine for its special 30th anniversary issue.
