About Michael Benanav
Michael Benanav is a freelance photographer and writer known for immersing in foreign cultures and bringing compelling images and stories back from distant places. He writes and/or shoots for The New York Times, Lonely Planet, The Christian Science Monitor Magazine, Geographical, Afar, Wend, and Hand/Eye, among others. NGO's including Save Tibet, The UN Foundation, Sustainable Cotton Project, Society for the Preservation of Indigenous Himalayan Activities (India), Maldhari Rural Action Group (India), The Swallows (Sweden), and Caravan to Class have used his photographs; numerous middle and high schools have brought him into their classrooms to give slide shows about the traditional Saharan salt trade and the endangered ways of nomads in north India.
For his first book, Men Of Salt: Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan of White Gold, Michael joined one of the world's last working camel caravans on a 1000-mile mission to haul salt from the heart of the desert to the fabled city of Timbuktu. The book was nominated by Barnes&Noble for their Discover prize and was named a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association (even though it was written for fully-grown adults). Michael's second book, Joshua & Isadora: A True Tale of Loss and Love in the Holocaust, traces the incredible wartime experiences that brought his paternal grandparents together on the deck of a refugee boat sailing from Bucharest to Istanbul at the end of 1944.
Michael recently completed work on a digital photobook for a United Nations agency, as well as updating Lonely Planet's Southwest USA guide book. He's still involved in projects about the nomadic water buffalo herders of the Van Gujjar tribe, after traveling with them for weeks on their annual spring migration to their summer pastures high in the Himalayas.
When not in some remote nook of the planet, Michael can often be found hiking in the hills behind his home in northern New Mexico. He's available for photographic and writing assignments worldwide.
When not in some remote nook of the planet, Michael can often be found hiking in the hills behind his home in northern New Mexico. He's available for photographic and writing assignments worldwide.
To see some of his published work, please visit: