The Work of Chilean Photographer Tomás Munita SANTIAGO, Chile - The motor boat cut through choppy waters before reaching Isla de Asia, off Peru's coast. We arrived half-drenched and shivering to a stunning scene: Quechua-speaking laborers with pickaxes trying to collect hardened guano, the bird dung so coveted in the 19th century as a fertilizer that nations waged wars over the islands where it is found. I lasted an afternoon on Isla de Asia on that assignment in 2008, nauseated by the guano dust in the air and the smell of ammonia emanating from the deposits. Tomás Munita, the Chilean photographer with whom I was traveling, decided to stay longer, stretching his trip over several days. The photographs Mr. Munita took at the time, and on return trips to those islands, are haunting. Barefoot workmen lug sacks of dung on their shoulders, as if little had changed in the century and a half since guano was the target of imperialist designs. Seabirds swirl overhead. Sunlight meekly penetrates the sky's hazy veil, capturing a horizon reminiscent of a nocturnal J.M.W. Turner oil painting. I have followed Mr. Munita's work over the years from Latin America and places much farther afield - Afghanistan's battlefields, Pakistan's circuses and tall mountains in the Himalayas. From each location, Mr. Munita, who freelances for The New York Times and other news organizations, finds new ways of documenting human existence. Grounded in the daily grind of journalism, Mr. Munita, 36, studied photography in Santiago, Chile's capital, and worked for a local newspaper before taking a job with The Associated Press in Panama. The news agency, he said, was a great school. "It taught me to be fast and sharp, to look for synthesis in my images," Mr. Munita said. Panama's backwater atmosphere might have driven some photographers crazy. But the lackadaisical feel of the Central American country was an opportunity, Mr. Munita said. "Spending time in Panama was great, because there was no news to cover," he said. So I had to find my own stories and take my time on them. Finding his own stories meant more than exploring Panama's canal, rain forests and islands. After traveling on assignment for The A.P. around Central America, and then Afghanistan, he took a sabbatical year in Asia, spending four months photographing Changpa nomads (below) who live in the high plateaus of northern India. The punishing, high-altitude region may look barren to outsiders, but its vast areas are home to animals like the Tibetan gazelle and the kiang, or wild ass. The Changpa herd goats and yak in brightly colored valleys full of orange earth and yellow grasses. Mr. Munita captured these scenes in 2003, before the nomads' traditional way of life began to disappear. Living for months among nomads was a departure for someone who grew up in Santiago, one of Latin America's most conservative cities. Mr. Munita said he got some of his taste for adventure from his grandfather, Julio Philippi, a scholar, diplomat and writer on demonología, or the study of demons, who served as Chile's minister of foreign affairs in the 1960s, and regaled his grandchildren with tales of horseback expeditions into the wilds of Chile. Much of Mr. Munita's most intriguing work involves spending time far from Chile. In Afghanistan, he has documented daily life in a country ravaged by war. One of Mr. Munita's books, "Kabul: Exiting the Shadows," explores the wounded Afghan capital. Another book, "Lost Harvest," documents the destruction of the Loa River in Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth. By now, it is hard to keep track of all the prizes he has received for his photographs. Tomás and I are friends, and we have worked together throughout Latin America, but I am still astonished by his quiet, self-effacing style. While we were on assignment this month in Chile, he was surprised to learn through e-mail that he had received the coveted Visa d'Or daily press award for his recent photographs from Syria. When I asked him why he had not attended the festival in Perpignan, France, where the award was announced - it is a prestigious networking event for photographers - he said he shuddered at the thought of promoting his work in such a crowded place. Given the places where Mr. Munita travels, it is not surprising that the subject matter of his photographs is often heavy. But appreciation of the absurd also emerges in some of his pictures, especially those related to different countries' armed forces, and the seemingly nonsensical missions to which they are sometimes devoted. Consider the Navy of Bolivia, a country without a sea. How else to explain the hapless expression of Vice Adm. José Alba Arnez, commander of the Bolivian Navy, captured by Mr. Munita in the admiral's office in La Paz, a city which is 11,942 feet above sea level? Then there is the photograph of the camouflaged instructor leading Dutch marines in a jungle warfare training course in the interior of Suriname. His face is hidden by a tree, obstructing the marines' view of him. I was along for that assignment in Suriname, writing about the training course in the former Dutch colony, and I still chuckle when recalling it. The Dutch were so concerned about offending people that they sponsored a "V.I.P. day" in which ambassadors - and a few journalists - were invited to the course to fire M-16 assault rifles at targets in the jungle. Mr. Munita, who now lives with his wife and three children near Santiago, in the Comunidad Ecológica de Peñalolén, an eclectic community of about 200 homes made largely from recycled materials, has his own ideas about what photography can achieve. "For me, photography is an additional language," he said. Different from words, it can immediately touch on an emotional aspect of what is being treated. Images, beyond being proof of truth, can help us understand our reality in a direct way. Mr. Munita said that his most formative experience as a photographer came years ago, during his first personal project in Potosí, the Bolivian city that grew as large as London by the 17th century, thanks to its remarkable lode of silver. Once among the world's richest cities, Potosí still relies on mining, but gloom now characterizes the place. About 15,000 miners, including hundreds of children, still toil in the Potosí mines which once enriched the Spanish empire. They battle silicosis, a disabling lung disease caused by inhaling dust deep in mine shafts, like one photographed by Mr. Munita (below) in which the light at the end of the tunnel seems to be as elusive as the chances of striking it rich in such a place. "Potosí is where I learned, during several trips over the course of months, to follow my instinct," he said. It was where I lost my fear and learned how to see for the first time.