Translation by Rebecca Neal

 

 

Liz McGregor says her interest in and love for Chile began when she spent a semester studying at NOLS in Patagonia in 1991. She was 19-years-old at the time, and her experience in Chile was completely different to the suburban life she was accustomed to back in New York. Since then, she has come to Chile every austral summer since 1996 to work, live and travel.

 

“With NOLS, we went to the end of the Carretera Austral, to Tortel, and spent several months around the Baker River. That changed my life," said Liz. Indeed, she grew up in an area with few natural sites, so the visit to Chilean Patagonia for her marked the start of a profound connection with nature and the environment.

 

For many years, Liz worked in cinema in New York and was an assistant director for independent films. She organized the first and only environmental film festival in New York and launched and co-organized the first South American edition of the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour in Santiago and Portillo. “I always wanted to return to Chile and invented pretexts to come back,” she laughs. Around the year 2000, she partnered with Bio Bio Expeditions and worked with them, first as a videographer and then as a logistical coordinator and trip leader.

 

 

 

 

Alex Nicks has worked as a videographer and photographer for organizations as diverse as National Geographic and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and as far afield as the Zambezi River in southern Africa, the Himalayas, North America and Chilean Patagonia. He currently lives in Colorado, but frequently travels around the world.

 

Liz’s love for the area and her relationship with the locals deepened when she was working as a guide in Patagonia and started work on a documentary called “The Life of the River,” about the threat posed by dams in the Futaleufú River. “This time I knew the area very well, because we had to travel across various sectors of Futaleufú. The more time you spend there, the more you have to see,” she explains.

 

She adds: “When you’re in such a beautiful, pristine, serene, simple place with incredible people and you know from the bottom of your heart how lucky you are to be there and to really know the place…it’s an honor and a privilege.” In this way, her dream of paying homage to this pristine place started to become a reality.

 

 

The two artists were inspired to create the book Portrait of Patagonia by the unrivalled beauty of Futaleufú and its surroundings. According to Liz, whichever way you look, there is something beautiful, interesting and spectacular, “because when you’re there every day you can see the Tres Monjas peak through rain, snow or sun, or surrounded by stars. The peak is the same, but it changes every day.”

 

One day, after years spent exploring every corner of the area, Liz wrote to Alex with the idea of producing a book, because she knew that she did not want to do it alone. “It’s always better to have some support,” she explains. This is how Alex, whose original experiences were in photography and videography focusing on white water rivers, ended up taking photographs from different points along the river, while Liz focused on interviews and design.

 

Collaboration was central to the work, which is a tribute to everyone who lives in the area. As well as photographs of landscapes, the river and life in the countryside, it also includes information about the history and environmental situation of Futaleufú. For this part, the authors spoke to a local social anthropologist and received archival material and old photographs from the Casa de Cultura, so that they can be compared with contemporary images.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 194-page book also contains a section with portraits of some of the locals, who tell stories about the town, Patagonian culture and its traditions. “It’s like a window into their lives. The people of Chile, especially in the south, opened their homes to us, and this was very important for us.”

 

It took around five years to put the book together; during this period, Liz and Alex worked to document different seasons, areas and homes around Futaleufú, as well as its people. However, it primarily focuses on an area known as “Azul,” where Liz has a house and lives part of the year with her husband and two children, Sol and Luna.

 

The book is currently available for purchase on their website portraitofpatagonia.com as well as some bookstores in the United States. The authors also plan to sell the book in Chile.

 

Says Liz: “For me, having a physical copy of the book after a project like this is important because there are people in the book who are no longer with us. I’m thinking about their families. The book honors a part of their history.”