Otromundo [] Art Photography

Otromundo is San Miguel’s limited edition art photography gallery, highlighting the photographic encounters, films and stories of award-winning artist Varial * Cedric. This exciting and unusual journey around the world features over 500 unique photos available immediately as well as printed to order locally in the size of your choice.

About the Photographer:

Cédric Hounin was born a single child in Paris in 1978. He grew up surrounded by his free spirited grandmother, “moon”, who was a traveller and pianist, his father who worked in several countries including Africa, South America, and the Pacific, as well as with his mother who was clever and unconditionally devoted to him. Even though he grew up in an urban environment, he always fostered a love for the mountains, leading his own adventures through the backcountry; going skiing and camping in the winter. In fact, he began taking pictures along those ski trips, several of which have been issued in France Ski Magazine. He has travelled and climbed mountains in the Alps, Ecuador, India, Patagonia, Indonesia, and North America while continuing to be an active paraglide pilot in Mexico, France, and India.

He graduated from business school and promptly moved away from Grenoble to Canada, working closely with the artist Varial who ran a visual art studio in Montreal from 2003 to 2010. While there he produced more than 400 digital images, conceptual images, mixing photography, photomontage, and illustrations. These were in close collaboration with other artists from the Montreal scene including musicians, singer-songwriters, circus troupes, art centers and music festivals. In the year 2010, he sold everything in order to begin a nomadic documentary journey.

Varial has admired journeying, remote places, tribes, and threatened cultures since he grew up being exposed to many different cultures and traditions. He is interested in the untold realities, rare moments, simple truths, and striving for elevation. His personal photography and film works document the transitions of “uncontacted tribes” to “contacted tribes”, mainly in Ecuador, who have been surviving. He has also looked at those in Afghanistan and Borneo, who have been disappearing.

After spending extensive time studying them, he decides to sell all his belongings in 2010. Between 2010-2011 he took a road trip 45,000km across Canada and the USA, going backcountry. In 2011 he trekked with his friend Fabrice for 5 weeks straight across the Wakhan Corridor and routes in the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan. All they had for that journey was a horse and a donkey carrying all the equipment. They did it in order to bring back images of unseen and forgotten places where the Wakhi and Kyrgyz people dwell, barely surviving.

In 2012, he was invited to New York to the Milk Gallery to exhibit the Wakhan Corridor images for two weeks. He also spent a month showing them at the Impossible Project Gallery. While there he did a one hour interview on NPR radio and was written up in the New York Times Lens Section for his phenomenal work.

He ended up winning 1st prize in the 2012 National Geographic Traveller Photo Contest after submitting a photo from his Wakhan trek called “Butterfly”. In 2013 after 3 months living with several tribal groups in Ecuador, he documented what he saw. These groups were eventually covered by National Geographic and NBC, which gained worldwide fame. This tribe is known as the “uncontacted tribe” or the Waoranis, living in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

His film based on the Waorani people, known as “Contactes” was being distributed. Around the same time his images from Afghanistan were used to make a film called “Wakhan” which won a prize for a first or second feature documentary at the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois in 2014.

Also in 2014 he did a project with Alex Shoumatoff, an author, where they travelled deep into the rainforest of the island known as Borneo. There, they lived with the last nomadic Penan in order to do a photo series that was eventually published in 2016 by the Smithsonian Magazine and National Geographic China.

A private NGO which strives to prevent climate disaster, known as NextGenClimate, contracted Varial for an assignment where he shot 5 stories in Michigan, Colorado, and Iowa. In total from 2013-2016 he also travelled once a year to India for several months to collaborate firsthand with Barefoot College. They are known for empowering women from 72 countries to become solar engineers so they can further educate their communities.  He helped Barefoot College develop a new media strategy that supported communications and teamwork based on short story telling. He also travelled to Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Salvador, and Ecuador to record the life of 15 indiginous women who have become solar engineers. The project is called Doña Luz, a 350-page photo book that was released in 2020.

In 2015 The Nature Conservancy NGO assigned Varial to travel for two months In Mexico. This