An Oasis of Imagination
An Oasis of Imagination illustrates the true story of Gaviotas told by author, Alan Weisman. The village of Gaviotas is a place of peace and plenty located in the remote savannas of Colombia. Created in the 1970s from a barren, uninhabitable desert, Gaviotas has blossomed into a self-sustaining "oasis of peace." By using renewable energy resources and innovative technology such as biodiesel fuel, wind turbines and solar power, Gaviotas' visionary founders created a diverse community with no need for guns, jails or violence. Gaviotas has been hailed as one of the most inspiring environmental stories ever told.
An Oasis of Imagination is highlighted by Alan Weisman's text along with photographs from award-winning photographers Antonin Kratochvil and Hector Emanuel.
An Oasis of Imagination also places a spotlight on the efforts of a few Chicagoans, with the help of local photographers, as the city's own inventors, visionaries and community leaders experiment with new ways of solving social and environmental problems.
Bio - Alan Weisman
Alan Weisman is an award-winning journalist whose reports have appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Orion, Audubon, Mother Jones, Discover, and on NPR, among others. He is a senior producer for Homelands Productions and teaches international journalism at the University of Arizona. Aside from Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, he is the author of four other books, The World Without Us (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2007), An Echo In My Blood (Harcourt Brace, Inc., 1999); La Frontera: The United States Border With Mexico (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986); and We, Immortals (Pocket Books, 1979).
Weisman has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Colombia, writer-in-residence at the Altos de Chavón Escuela de Arte y Diseño in the Dominican Republic, the John Farrar Fellow in Nonfiction at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Among his radio awards shared with his Homelands colleagues are a Robert F. Kennedy Citation, the Harry Chapin/World Hunger Year award, and Brazil's Prèmio Nacional de Jornalismo Radiofônico. He has also received a Four Corners Award for Best Nonfiction Book; a Los Angeles Press Club Award for Best Feature Story; and a Best of the West Award in Journalism. His book, Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, won the 1998 Social Inventions Award from the London-based Global Ideas Bank.
Bio - Antonin Kratochvil
Antonin Kratochvil's own refugee life shares much in common with what he has rendered on film. Kratochvil's unique style of photography is the product of personal experience and intimate conditioning rather than privileged voyeurism.
Over the years his fluid and unconventional work has been sought by numerous publications stretching across widely differing interests. From shooting Mongolia's street children for the Museum of Natural History's magazine to a portrait session with David Bowie for Detour, from covering the war in Iraq for Fortune Magazine to shooting Deborah Harry for a national advertising campaign for the American Civil Liberties Union, Kratochvil's ability to see through and into his subjects and show immutable truth has made his pictures not facsimiles but uncensored visions.
Kratochvil has received numerous awards, grants and honorable mentions dating back to 1975, including World Press Photo Awards in the categories of general news and nature and the environment. He also received a grant from Aperture publishing for his study on the fractious relationship between American civil liberties and the newly formed Department of Homeland Security.
Bio - Hector Emanuel
Hector Emanuel is a Peruvian-born photojournalist with a Master's degree in physics. His photos focus mainly on social and political issues in Latin America and the United States. He has been the recipient of an award by the World Press Photo Foundation for his documentation of the civil conflict in Colombia. His photographs have been widely exhibited and he regularly contributes to magazines, newspapers and books. He is a member of Metro Collective.