Best Bet: Exhibit captures the ‘grandeur of Baja California’
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/sep/17/eventos-l...
By Pablo Jaime Sainz
September 17, 2009
When: Saturday through Jan. 3
Where: San Diego Natural History Museum, Balboa Park
Tickets: $13, adults; $11, seniors; $8, students; $7, children 3 to 12; children under 3, free
Phone: (619) 232-0248
Online: http://www.sdnhm.org
For explorers and environmentalists, the Baja California peninsula is a paradise teeming with natural beauty. And for Ralph Lee Hopkins, a
photographer and writer for National Geographic, the region is one of the loveliest places on Earth.
“Baja California is very different from the rest of Mexico,” says Hopkins, who has visited the peninsula at least once a year for the last 20 years.
“Because it's remained separate from the rest of the country and stayed mostly rural, it has many places that are very beautiful.”
Some of his images are part of the photographic exhibit “Baja California,” which runs from Saturday to Jan. 3 at the San Diego Natural History Museum
in Balboa Park.
The exhibit features 60 color prints, some by Mexican photographers, including Tijuana's Julio Rodríguez.
These images bear witness to the great natural diversity in the 800-mile-long peninsula, says Annaliese Cassarino, curator and director of the
museum's Ordover Gallery, where the exhibit will be housed.
“Many people aren't aware of the immense diversity of the flora and fauna in Baja California,” she says.
And that's because the peninsula is much more than the tourist destinations of Tijuana, Ensenada and Los Cabos.
There's the San Ignacio Lagoon, a sanctuary for whales that migrate from the Arctic Ocean every winter. There's the Sea of Cortés, considered to
be the world's aquarium. And there are the deserts, brimming over with cactuses.
Rodríguez is participating in the exhibit with photographs of the vineyards and the wine culture of the Guadalupe Valley.
“I tried to capture the grandeur of Baja California,” he says. “These photographs are proof that the peninsula is much more than just a region with
rocks and thorns.”
Most of the exhibit centers around the work of Hopkins, who travels the world for National Geographic.
But Baja California holds a special place for him, so much so that he organizes explorations of the region and has launched a project to save the
wildlife of the peninsula.
Unfortunately, much of the natural beauty of the peninsula's coasts is threatened by the development of large hotels and tourism centers, says
Hopkins.
“The more people know about the beauty of Baja California, the more they will care about saving it,” says Hopkins, who will give a talk about the
region at the museum on Saturday, at 9 a.m. as part of the exhibition's opening.
“I hope that through this exhibit people will realize the great treasure they have just a few miles away.”
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