From The Scotsman:

LOST in the Sahara desert in 1969, with only featureless sand dunes to guide him, photographer Mark Edwards was rescued by a Tuareg tribesman on a camel.

As he warmed himself by the campfire, a nomadic host produced a cassette player and Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall sang out.

Deeply moved by the words, Edwards vowed to illustrate Dylan’s emotions and has since visited more than 150 countries in his quest to show man’s effect on the fragile environment.

[...]

Edwards hopes his newly published collection, named after the Dylan track the Tuareg played for him, will help convince the public and world leaders to reinvent the modern world as one compatible with nature.

Hearing Dylan in the desert was a turning point in Edwards’ work and he became one of the first environmental photographers at a time when the concept was not known.

Almost 40 years later, he said: “I would give anything not to be facing the environmental problems we are looking at. We are still in denial about the consequences of climate change.”

‘Hard Rain - Remaking a World Gone Wrong’ will run outdoors in the Garden’s fossil courtyard from 8 August, with a lecture and slide show by Edwards on 7 August.

The real story here, if you ask me, is how and why that Tuareg tribesman came to be digging Bob Dylan in the desert in 1969. Maybe, surrounded all the time by those featureless sand dunes, the guy made a fetish out of collecting songs about rain. Maybe the next song on that tape was Singing in the Rain, then Pennies from Heaven, then Raining In My Heart, and so on — with the parched, dusty tribesman just blissing out, dreaming of a wonderful world filled with gushing torrents of water and lush vegetation. But I guess we’ll never know.

Meanwhile, it’s a good excuse to listen to Dylan sing the song. YouTube hosts the version you’d best have hankies close by to listen to: 1994 in Japan, with orchestral backing.

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