Never before have the desert of the earth been captured so impressively in word and picture. What Michael Martin, adventurer, photographer and geographer has undertaken here is no less than an extraordinarily ambitious attempt to document the whole variety of these deserts – their individual characteristics, the landscapes, the animal and plant world, the miscellaneous lifestyles of their inhabitants and the richness of their cultures. The unique pictures and science-based text come together to create a standard work on the deserts of the earth.

On the one hand Michael Martin is an adventurer who likes to cover all his journeys by motorbike, riding over desolate rocky mountains and through hour-long sandstorms, in the bitter cold and stifling heat, over mined out slopes such as in Afghanistan or in the rebel regions of Chad or Ethiopia.
He is also on the other hand a research traveller and uses the knowledge gained from a degree in geography to investigate the variety of these living spaces and to consider how the various bizarre erosion forms or table mountains came to be created; and he is not least a person full of curiosity, who is interested in the ways people in the deserts manage to survive – and who has the greatest respect for their survival strategies and cultures.

His photography is participatory not intrusive; he does not set out to judge or romanticise the land or the people, whether they wear traditional clothes or frayed t-shirts. The beauty of the desert, the richness of its colours, its length and breadth are not solemnified but captured in their authentic truth. He was accompanied on his journeys by his partner, the camerawoman Elke Wallner. She was filming a documentary for TV.