The World Wide Panorama

Introduction

On the Solstice weekend, June 19-21 2004, more than 110 photographers in 32 countries around the world created VR panoramas with the common theme of World Heritage. This site showcases the results of their efforts.

Winner of the Exploratorium's Ten Cool Sites Award for educational excellence, September/October, 2004.

History of the Idea – Tito Dupret

Belgian photographer Tito Dupret is a man with a personal crusade -- to photograph (including VR photographs) UNESCO World Heritage Sites. He has been traveling for several years, producing amazing panoramas of Angkor in Cambodia, the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, many places in China, and most recently in Sri Lanka. Tito's site, http://www.world-heritage-tour.org/ (Update March 2015: gone?) is rapidly becoming an outstanding archive of images of our common cultural heritage.

After seeing the success of the first World Wide Panorama, Tito suggested that world heritage be used as the theme of the next event. He felt that this theme would continue the WWP's goal to promote awareness of VR Photography while sharing Tito's goal of promoting awareness about World Heritage.

Theme Essay: World Heritage

The essay conveys the team’s idea of the event. It is usually published together with the Theme announcement and offers a starting point for the contributing photographers.

At the time of the event there were 754 officially designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites. They are listed by region and country at: http://whc.unesco.org/nwhc/pages/sites/main.htm 

The sites have been selected by the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization). More information about this group and their program at: http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm 

The sites are scattered widely over the surface of the earth. Since the definition of world heritage includes natural landscapes as well as man-made ones, there are sites in both heavily populated regions and remote areas. They celebrate world cultures from the neolithic to relatively recent times. Some are single buildings, many are entire historic towns or city centers, some are long abandoned. 

New sites are continuously being evaluated and added to the list - additional sites were announced as the world wide panorama event proceeded. 

The theme of the panorama shoot is world heritage, not just UNESCO World Heritage sites. Many participants (about half) were not able to reach a UNESCO inscribed site, so they made their own nomination of a place worthy of consideration as world heritage.