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Argentina is taking part for the first time in the International
Heritage Photographic Experience this year (2009), thanks to
the kind invitation of Mr Esteve Mach, to whom we are very
grateful for this opportunity to bring our young people closer
to the heritage and to appreciate it.
The National Directorate for International Cooperation, which
pertains to the Ministry of Education, working through the
network of schools associated with UNESCO, sought the
participation of educational establishments which are close to
UNESCO World Heritage sites. Our country’s landscape is very
varied, thanks to its remarkable geography, which ranges from
sub-tropical forest to frozen Antarctica at its southernmost
point. Framed in this diversity are the eight sites declared
World Heritage by UNESCO. The photographs submitted are
of two of them. The Ischigualasto Provincial park (Ischigualasto
and Talampaya Natural Parks site) in the province of San Juan,
contains some of the world’s most important palaeontological
sites, where the remains have been found of vertebrates that
lived here during the Mesozoic era, 180 million years ago. The
shapes and colours of the landscape are very striking, notably “El
Hongo” as photographed by Martín Arias. The other photograph
is of Quebrada de Humahuaca, a cultural landscape, located in
the north-west of the country in the province of Jujuy, where
the colourful views frame a group of places with adobe houses,
historic chapels and pre-Hispanic ruins, and time seems to have
stood still. This photograph shows the tower of Santa Bárbara,
part of an old chapel. This historic natural landscape has been
visually polluted by a cell-phone antenna, situated just a few
metres behind the historic building, simply ruining this view for
the tourists who visit the town in search of nature and the past
itself. Magdalena Zerpa, who took the photograph, points out
a difficult challenge: how do we reconcile conservation with
development? |
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