Did he or didn't he? And does it matter?

By Max Woodworth
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Feb 29, 2004, Page 19

Travel vicariously where Marco Polo went, as seen through the lens of Michael Yamashita. Here he caught a herd of horses grazing in the Pamirs, in Tajikistan. PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

In an outdoor space at the base of the Taipei 101 building, the National Geographic Channel has set up a small, but interesting photo exhibition derived from its upcoming three-part series Marco Polo: The China Mystery Revealed.

The 57 photos on exhibit were taken by long-time National Geographic photographer Michael Yamashita and are part of a voluminous compendium of shots that inspired the channel to retrace Marco Polo's steps through Central Asia, China and then back to Italy via Southeast Asia for a TV

documentary.

As is to be expected from the magazine's documentary style, Yamashita's photos portray the parts of the world that Marco Polo traveled through in a manner that consciously tries to blur the distinction of time to emphasize the "exotic" nature of the subjects and in some cases to imagine what scenes must have looked like to Marco back in the 13th century. The overall effect also hints at how little modernity has encroached on these places, though in the case of China this required some fancy staging of

photographs.

"In Dunhuang (China) the camel caravan I wanted to shoot was actually for tourists. The animals had numbers on their sides, which didn't look good at all. So I took the shot with the camels back-lit and there you go, I had the shot that summed up the whole journey," Yamashita said in an interview last week.

Another of donkey carts rambling into the dusty Silk Road market town of Kashgar with photogenic Uighur families on the back captures the historic nature of the oasis. But what remains out of the photo is the heavy Chinese presence in the town and the concrete and bathroom-tile architecture that is beginning to dominate the landscape there. But who wants to see that?

Most of the photos, however, weren't staged at all, and it's clear that Yamashita took full advantage of the magazine's connections to capture people and places that no one else could have. There are shots, for instance, at Saddam Hussein's birthday party (without Saddam in attendance), and of the Afghan rebel leader Ahmad Shah Massoud who was assassinated by the Taliban days before the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US.

There's also plenty of evidence that in places like Iran, Afghanistan and India, life now is pretty much as Marco described it in his boldly titled book Description of the World, which is why Yamashita came away from his journey believing the Marco Polo mystery.

"There's so much evidence to support the claim that he made it to China. There's simply no way that what was written was from anything but first-hand experience," he said. "And anyway, it's a lot more fun to believe he made it."

True the Marco Polo spirit, the photos are essentially a visual travelogue that would give all but the most sedentary a serious case of the travel bug.

Performance notes:
Marco Polo: The China Mystery Revealed will be on show until March 14. The documentary series will be aired at 9pm on the National Geographic Channel for three consecutive Sundays beginning March 7. The Taipei 101 building is located at 45 Shifu Rd, Taipei (臺北市市府路45號).