Panasonic Lumix Digital Cameras To Photograph Largest-Ever UNESCO World Heritage Photo Project

The World’s Heritage, a project that will create the largest-ever photographic collection of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The photographs will be published under the OUR PLACE brand in an initial series of 10 books which will be released over the next five years. A team of international photographers will cover the sites from their physical and geographical aspects, as well as document the human presence and interaction that helps make them so important to mankind. An interactive website will be launched later next year, when sufficient images are available.

The website, www.ourplaceworldheritage.com, will feature World Heritage site photographs and background information relevant to the sites’ history and value. The Panasonic-supported project will eventually field an international team of 20 photographers, who will shoot digital images of a large number of the 830 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 138 countries around the globe. The team will exclusively use Panasonic Lumix Digital Cameras, including the newly launched Digital SLR, DMC-L1.

“Panasonic is keen to contribute to photographic culture, and to help promote and protect the important UNESCO World Heritage sites through the Our Place Project,” said Mamoru Yoshida, Director of Digital Still Camera Business Unit of Panasonic AVC Networks Company, the largest internal division of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (NYSE: MC). “This a project in which Panasonic is proud to be involved. Additionally, through the project, we would like to make people aware of the important value of the World Heritage sites and also about Panasonic’s strong commitment to photographic culture. Through Panasonic Lumix Digital Cameras we believe we can help to develop a new photo culture for the digital era.”

UNESCO’s World Heritage Center has announced a partnership between UNESCO and Our Place Publishing, a New Zealand publishing company, which will manage the project. “Under this new partnership, World Heritage sites, and the often extraordinary human stories linked to them, will become better known to all. Increased awareness, knowledge and appreciation will also lead to better protection for these remarkable places, many of which are extremely fragile,” says Francesco Bandarin, Director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre.

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