Nostalgia - 30 years ago with Hasselblad

Rummaging through some old files I found this - my photo on the cover of one of those booklets Hasselblad used to publish. This one was in 1980. They also used to use some of my pics on their posters.

I bought my first Hasselblad (500C) in about 1965 (later added 2 more). My first 6 books were shot with Hasselblads. I switched to 35mm when I did my first Alaska book in 1976 because I made a 13 day backpacking trip through the Brooks Range and the Hasselblad equipment was too heavy to carry.

Since I've gone digital they now sit on the shelf. I'll never get rid of them because even after 40 years of rough use in the boondocks they still work flawlessly. The finest precision cameras ever made, in my opinion.

Petroglyphs 6000 miles and Several Thousand Years Apart

I've recently been scanning some slides I made at Lake Baikal, Siberia about 15 years ago and discovered some shots of petroglyphs on the western shore of the lake. They looked strangely familiar, so I dug out some photos of petroglyphs I had shot in Canyonlands National Park in Utah. The similarity is amazing. Two different cultures - the Anasazi dating back a few thousand years - and the unknown people from the Baikal region whose origins may go back several thousand years. Lake Baikal is more than 6000 miles from Utah.

I suppose it's possible that similar kinds of depictions could evolve in different cultures, but still this similarity is intriguing. It does seem to lend more credence to migration of people from Asia to North America.

The first two photos on the left are from Baikal. The bottom one of red sandstone is from Utah. Click to enlarge any of them

All photos © Boyd Norton