Who I am

Michael Palin said, “Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life.” Well, that’s me!

My name is Jordi Llorens Estapé, I have travelled to more than one hundred countries and have lived with about forty different ethnic groups throughout the world. My passion for travelling and my adventurous spirit, combined with my endless curiosity of the human soul, has led me to explore the planet, accompanied always by a notebook and a camera.

I travel across the planet looking for answers, and perhaps for that reason, I am interested in the most remote places, in the most ancestral cultures, in the most isolated rites and ethnic groups to discover in all this who we are, who we would be without the Internet, without television, without mirrors.

I show my experiences of cultural integration in the form of cultural services all over the world through talks, audio-visual documentaries, cultural exhibitions and teaching, making accessible to the public the less known aspects about every place through captivating images that manage to create emotions, a call to reflection, learning and emphasizing the value of all those little things that makes the trip a rewarding experience.

Engineer by training and
travel reporter as a vocation

I was born in Granollers, a town near Barcelona, but I might certainly live in Sydney. Everyone says I am a photographer, but I have always considered myself rather as a travel reporter. I am passionate about travelling, sharing and experimenting. I am curious, the unknown attracts me, and maybe because of this, I like to transport myself to remote cultures and unexplored places.

Versatile
My passion for travelling has gradually been a stronger impulse, so constant that it has allowed me eventually to turn it into a profession. At present, I expose the set of all my cultural integration experiences in the form of cultural services all over the world through talks, audio-visual documentaries, cultural exhibitions and teaching, as well as in Master’s degree programs in tourism at diverse European universities.

For me, the photography is a way of expression, vital and artistic, through which I can bring to our lives a distant and unknown culture of an immense wealth, both visual and personal.

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Social Communicator

All this photographic material and personal experiences could not remain closed at home, and it is here where my communicator’s character appears to turn all these unique experiences into a differentiating and exclusive value, using the images as a way to raise awareness, thrill and transmit knowledge.

Through my camera lens, I try to keep those unique pictures of persons, cultures and places where I have lived and shared exciting moments. Moments that have taught me essential values to coexist in peace and harmony, respecting those who think and live in a different way.

The whole wealth and diversity of our planet, as well as the human beings who inhabit it, have been and are the connecting thread of my travelling exhibitions: «Otras miradas, otros horizontes» [Other looks, other horizons], «Mercados del mundo» [Markets of the world], «La inocencia de una mirada» [The innocence of a gaze] and «Culturas Tribales» [Tribal Cultures].

See Blog

Books

To date, I have published two books: «La vuelta al mundo en 80 lunas» [Around the world in eighty moons], and a book based on photos of one of those peculiar places that I never miss when I travel, «Mercados del mundo» [Markets of the world], which was awarded with the third prize of the competition «The best World Foreign Cookery book 2009» by The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.

Go to Books

My relationship with the Media

Some of the experiences that I have lived has even been highlighted in the media, some of them so funny that they have led me to explain them in the back cover of La Vanguardia, El País or El Periódico, of which the best known among them is that one that it turned me into Royal Postman (link to article) between two kingdoms: the kingdom of Tonga and the kingdom of Spain.

Likewise, I collaborate with documentary producers in need of episodes, travel magazines, radios or televisions.

Go to Press

Approach and experiences with other cultures

When someone asks me about my favorite country, I always answer that I would like to make my own country, where then I would include the best of every place. Although I realize often that the reason for which I have liked more one or another place depends much on the experiences I have lived through, and especially, the people I have met everywhere. Undoubtedly, the best heritage that can give us a country.

This contact and proximity with the human being make to awake in me the curiosity to discover the most remote ethnic groups throughout the world and know all this diversity that takes root in the irreplaceable wealth of the indigenous peoples in danger of disappearance due to the progress of communication and globalization. As Mikhail Bakunin said, “Uniformity is death, diversity is life.”

At Present

And you see, the years are going by and I keep on having this bug. The truth is, however, that the most satisfying thing is not always to enjoy the trip, but to remember it later.

Is it not beautiful that remains the illusion to explain to people who listen to you what you have seen and feeling as they call you a ‘missionary of culture’?

But travelling is also like a letter: there is inside a postcard with a message. The postcard is the images that you have taken, the message is the impressions that you have brought with you to distribute them to others.

Do you know a thing? From the heart, actually, I am still in love of Pacific Ocean cultures in the same way, despite having travelled so many times to their remote islands and, certainly, health permitting, here I will continue to explain you new stories of the world, our world.

Go to Travels to unexploited places

Some photos of my travels

MEDIA APPEARANCES

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