What makes a place special to you? By Jeff and Peter Hutchens
“What makes a place special to you?†is one of the most difficult questions to answer. Think about it. Does it necessarily have to include the place you were born even if you left it before you could walk? Is it because the place is where you learned to communicate or the place where you got your accent? Where you made the most important decisions of your life? Where you feel most at home? The place you dream of someday living in?
For 120 years, National Geographic has gifted generations with stunning images of science and adventure. The spirit in both science and adventure is openness. No one can have an adventure or learn more about the world without risking old beliefs or prejudices. This adventure carries that very spirit.
The brothers Jeff and Peter Hutchens, photographer and filmmaker, respectively. traveled China carrying pieces of their childhood memories, a gentle humor and a great passion to explore and I would like to add, kind hearts and open minds, to allow the place and its people to come through their lenses and show who the Chinese really are. That even if there are over a billion of them, their individual faces, the sparkle in those pair of eyes, the song of the Yangtze balladeer — are no less worthy of what China is about. There was no agenda for these two brothers, save to expose the rich tapestry of China, by casting in light and shadow the amazing encounters they had with actual faces, actual moments in a sea of lives.
When they were ask about what their adventure has taught them about hope for humans and the planet, given the global uncertainty we all seem to face now. They said that adventures like this really reveal what is so common about all of us which makes our humanity shine. They said these things do not usually make the headlines. Friendships, unless brokered by states, do not make breaking news. But this is what makes us humans cultivate hope for ourselves that we have it in within us to be better humans to one another and the planet.
What makes a place special is tied up with your ability to understand it in its changing seasons. The Hutchens brothers in “Somewhere in China†showed us that seeing with new eyes is what transforms you. It makes you, as National Geographic says, think again.
