The Beautiful, Rugged Patagonia
La hermosa y dura Patagonia
In 2012, Tomás Munita converted an old Mercedes Benz van into a motor home and set off with his wife and children to explore Patagonia for three months. A photographer who has won dozens of prestigious international awards for his photography documenting wars, disasters, environmental pollution and more around the world, he decided to take a pause from his work as a regular photographer for The New York Times. Instead, he grabbed the gift of time and headed south from his native Santiago. The trip lit a fire. “I immediately fell in love with Patagonia, with the landscape, culture, sense of time and wildness,” he says.
Since then, he has gone on several other trips to Patagonia with his family, on his own, or on assignment for National Geographic and The New York Times. So far, the subjects of his camera have included the gaucho life, like the fascinating trip he went on with a group of
Patagonian cowboys in search of wild bulls at Last Hope Sound in Magallanes; observing sheep shearing in Tierra del Fuego; joining a horse tamer on trips into the backcountry; and documenting the conservation initiatives of Tompkins Conservation.
The photos in this essay reveal the tough yet kind character of the Patagones who make their livelihood in the rugged countryside. Enduring long periods of isolation tending to their animals with their dogs and horses, Tomás says they are always friendly and welcoming. “I enjoyed so much traveling those long distances in their company. Traveling by horse is like traveling in slow motion, everything happens slowly, there is time for every little detail. For someone coming from the city this is a surreal way of connecting to nature, to oneself, to the horse that is carrying you and the people you are sharing with.”
Tomás has also learned from his time in Patagonia the joys of camping without a tent and intends to be back for more adventures under the stars, post-pandemic, to once more slow down and appreciate “no electricity, no network, just huge dynamic landscapes, animals, wind, a friend, fire and time.”