Welcome to My Country (2003-06) | When the Snake Whispers Your Name: Travels in the Netherworld

“A kaleidoscopic snapshot of the psychic life of the planet – funny, scary, and true.”

Welcome to the Netherworld – the world’s lost deserts, jungles and Arctic wastes – and the wild renegades, determined women, and sly rogues who thrive there.

“The original idea was carpets. We were going to follow a carpet dealer on his rounds through remote valleys of Kurdistan, but it didn’t work out that way.”

So begins a journey that takes writer Larry Frolick and photographer Donald Weber across three continents, to explore the unhinged backwaters of our stubbornly local subworld – explosive Middle Eastern deserts, hallucinogenic South American jungles and forbidding Arctic wastes. With impulsive zeal, the pair argues over reality with each other and everyone they meet – tribal chiefs and pageant queens, thugs and undercover cops, street dogs and other journalists – creating a kaleidoscopic snapshot of the psychic life of our planet – funny, scary, and true.

It’s a world of dispossessed, subversive, and appallingly innocent strangers – secret heroes all, whose escapades are both wildly entertaining and strangely revelatory.

Larry Frolick and Donald Weber won the Lange-Taylor Prize for Journalism.