Sahara

From Tunis to Timbuktu, from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, the Sahara is the world's largest desert, covering an area the size of Western Europe, and set apart from all other deserts by its immense scale. The Arabic word sahara simply means "wasteland" -- but what a diverse and amazingly beautiful wasteland.Within the three and a half million square miles embracing ten countries, there are landscapes of incredible grandeur. Two hundred thousand years ago, North Africa was an area of lush green plans where hunters wandered in search of elephant and buffalo. Time, wind and water have excavated the Sahara into its present form. There are majestic mountains whose weathered peaks rise like cathedral spires. There are story-book oases with green palms around onyx-blue pools, shimmering white salt lakes and, above all, the great shifting sand seas.Photographer Kazuyoshi Nomachi captures the overwhelming beauty of the Sahara. Stunning imagery reveals a rare intimacy with the desert landscapes and its peoples -- an intimacy which he has fostered since his earliest visits to the Sahara more than 20 years ago. Beyond merely superb pictures, Nomachi brings to life the extraordinary breadth and diversity of the desert, from shifting sands and wind-blown rock formations, to lush, green oases, to the people who eke out a living in the lands in between.An introductory essay by Michael Asher reflects an extensive knowledge of the Sahara desert, developed through his extended sojourns in the arid, expansive tract that covers the whole of northern Africa. Populated as far back as Neolithic times by tribes of hunter-gatherers and later, roaming herds of cattle, the Sahara is now home totribes of hunters, farmers and desert nomads who have adapted to the ever-changing environment. Asher's words complement Nomachi's pictures, breathing life into views of an arid land that was once green savanna.