ASHLI AKINS
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER | storyteller. researcher. activist.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Empty
The world's longest lockdown 2020. Some of Cusco's most crowded streets, during its busiest tourist season of the year.
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April-June 2020
Cusco, Peru
Fuji X-T100
Ashli Akins
Apu Ausangate
Six-day unaided trek (with two friends and one dog) circumnavigating Apu Ausangate, one of the most sacred and highest peaks of the Cusco region of Peru. At our highest, we summited (three times) to 5200 metres (17,000 feet) above sea level.
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June 2019
Ausangate, Peru
Canon 5D Mark II & Fuji X-T100
Ashli Akins
Lucía La Alpaquera
Accompanying alpaquera Lucia Mamani of the Illariy Ch'aska Women's Cooperative, as she herds her alpacas and sheep through a rainstorm, high in the Andean mountains above her tiny community of Cancha Cancha, which sits at 4000 metres above sea level.
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October 2018
Cancha Cancha, Peru
Fuji X-T100
Ashli Akins
Juana
I've worked with the spinners and weavers of the tiny highland Andean village of Cancha Cancha for the past decade. Here is one of the photo essays I had the honour of capturing in 2018: Juana Ccarhuani Ccorcca, cleaning and spinning Huacaya alpaca yarn at her home in Acopata, an annex high above Cancha Cancha, which sits beside a glacial lake at about 4500 metres above sea level. After a couple of days of thoughtful, slow, manual labour, this yarn (the colour of which is "puka chumpi" in Quechua) turned into a beautiful two-ply ball for my father.
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October 2018
Acopata, Peru
Fuji X-T100
Ashli Akins
Alejandrina's Boys
Luis Alberto and Abrahan are the sons of one of three families that live in Yanacocha, a tiny annex hidden between three mountains and beside a glacial lake. Here, they raise alpacas and cultivate potatoes.
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October 2018
Yanacocha, Peru
Fuji X-T100
Ashli Akins
Nanyuki
Pa-Moja works in collaboration Ol Pejeta Conservancy to improve human-wildlife interactions, as poaching worsens, endangered species increase, and habitat for locals shrinks. These are a few of the photos I had the privilege of capturing in Nanyuki and Nairobi while on assignment with Pa-Moja, learning about these complex issues.
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July 2015
Nanyuki & Nairobi, Kenya
Canon 5D Mark II
Ashli Akins
The Suitcase
After Lyana's Gramma Aloo (Aloo meaning mother in Carrier) passed away, her parents gave her a suitcase containing materials she had used to make moccasins, gloves, and other items. The suitcase contained hundreds of paper cut-outs of hands and feet. Caribou cut-outs (Gramma Aloo's clan). Tubes of beads. They represented the day-to-day life of a Carrier (Dakelh) woman from 1948 to 1998: her favourite Earl Grey tea boxes, cereal boxes, advertisements, a government cheque, even her son's exercise book from residential school. This exhibit was featured at UBC and in Richmond for over a year, and documented in several media outlets. Here are a few small excerpts and photos from the exhibit. (Photos by Ashli Akins; photos of the exhibit by Joel Baziuk)
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January 2016
Vancouver, BC
Lyana Patrick & Ashli Akins