Presentation: A Journey with Marco Polo

"A Journey with Marco Polo"
by Michael Yamashita and Mike Edwards
Photographer and Writer of "Maro Polo: A Photographer's Journey"

Perhaps no land journey in history is more famous than Marco Polo’s trek across Asia to China. As described in his book, The Description of the World, completed in about 1299, the Venetian encountered such wonders as the “singing sand dunes” of Dunhuang, China, “mountains of salt” in present-day Afghanistan, and the glories of the Mongol court of Kublai Khan. Europeans were fascinated by Polo’s account of such unknown wonders as paper money and the rock that burned—coal. But Marco’s book also contained exaggerations and often outrageous falsehoods, ammunition for a legion of doubters as old as the book itself.

For an extensive three-part series in National Geographic Magazine (May, June and July 2001), photographer Michael Yamashita and writer Mike Edwards put the Venetian’s reputation to the ultimate test – using Polo’s own book as a travel guide for a journey in his footsteps.

They retraced Polo’s route across from Venice through restricted areas in Iraq, across Iran and through war zones in Afghanistan, following one thread of the Silk Road into China, and Polo’s return by way of Sumatra, Sri Lanka and India. Altogether they transited, on the ground, more than seven thousand miles of his route. Along the way they encountered numerous landmarks (the Grand Canal, the Yangtze) and peoples (the raw meat eaters and gold teeth minority of Yunnan) documented in the Description, deepening their conviction that Polo’s account is indeed authentic.

Yamashita’s full color 504-page book, Marco Polo: A Photographer’s Journey, published by White Star Publishers, continues to set records as a best-selling photographic book around the world and has been published in thirteen languages. The National Geographic Channels International also produced a three-part series Marco Polo Returns to China (2004). Yamashita narrated his journey as an American photographer retracing and documenting Marco Polo route from West to the East.

A regular National Geographic contributor since 1979, Yamashita has produced stories on such wide-ranging subjects as Somalia and Sudan, England and Ireland, New Guinea and New Jersey, China’s Great Wall and Japan’s fabled Samurai. Fluent in Japanese, he has covered the length of Japan, from Hokkaido the Kyushu. His books include Mekong: A Journey on the Mother of Waters and the award-winning In the Japanese Garden. His work has been displayed at the National Gallery of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Kodak’s Professional Photographers Showcase at Epcot Center in Orlando.

Mike Edwards, in a 34-year career at National Geographic, was the author of more than fifty major articles for the National Geographic Magazine and won national awards for reporting in the Soviet Union and the ex-Soviet Union. Now retired, he continues to contribute to the magazine while occasionally lecturing on Marco Polo.