The challenge

Public involvement is necessary to raise the profiles of the cultural and natural sites inscribed on the World Heritage List and to guarantee the conservation of the world’s heritage. Photography, with its proven ability to communicate across cultural and geographical boundaries, is an ideal medium to undertake this task.

Our Actions

UNESCO and the New Zealand-based company OUR PLACE signed a partnership agreement in 2006 in which they confirmed their commitment to work together to promote the World Heritage Convention. They also agreed to create an official and representative World Heritage photographic database that can be used for promoting the sites of the World Heritage List and World Heritage values in general.

Results on the ground

OUR PLACE supplies photographs for the World Heritage Centre website galleries, and has supplied numerous images for UNESCO and related third-party publications. OUR PLACE has produced and curated photographic exhibitions featuring images from the OUR PLACE Collection. The 50 large billboard images in the “Human Ingenuity and the Marvels of Nature“ exhibition that was held around the perimeter fence of UNESCO’s Paris Headquarters through the summer of 2011 exclusively featured OUR PLACE photographs. OUR PLACE is constantly developing new exhibition and presentation methods and is now beginning to document certain World Heritage sites in both still and HD movie formats from low impact flying camera platforms.

The photographers who work on assignment for the OUR PLACE World Heritage project have a proven track record in documenting cultural and natural locations around the world with integrity and skill. This team of International photographers works to capture the human dimension of a site as well as its important physical elements. They have proved their expertise in a large variety of challenging culture and geographical locations – the quality of their work speaks for itself.

About OUR PLACE

OUR PLACE has currently photographed over 370 World Heritage sites in 84 countries and currently has an archive of more than 45,000 exclusively owned World Heritage images. These are made available for approved exhibitions and displays. A sample selection from each documented site is available for viewing on the www.ourplaceworldheritage.com website, which attracts thousands of visitors from around the world. OUR PLACE, with its team of international photographers and its comprehensive world heritage photographic archive, is committed to documenting and promoting “our place on our planet.”