If love is friendship set on fire, then conservation photography is nature photography set on fire. “Clearly, the similarities with nature photography are many, but the most outstanding difference lies in the fact that conservation photography is born out of purpose,” writes Christina Mittermeier, President of the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP). “Anyone can purchase equipment and learn the secrets of wildlife behavior. What can’t be purchased is the empathy necessary to create awe-inspiring images that move people to act.”
There are times when conservation photography looks identical to nature photography–the wide, sweeping landscapes, or some majestic animal engaging in a natural behavior. Then there are those times when the subject matter is far less beautiful or appealing, such as Joel Sartore’s photo of frogs belly-up in King’s Canyon National Park, taken to raise awareness about the deadly chytrid fungus and the amphibian extinction crisis. The photo was one of several featured in the National Geographic Magazine article “The Vanishing: Amphibian Extinction”. It is in these examples that the distinction between nature photography and conservation photography is the most visible; conservation photography isn’t always going to be pretty. It is photography born of need, not of aesthetics.
“As conservation challenges continue to grow around us, the need for the kinds of images that touch hearts and change minds also is growing,” writes Mittermeier. She founded the ILCP in 2003, after realizing the pivotal role that photography could play in moving people to care, a critical aspect of conservation.
Mittermeier was moved by the work of Peter Dombrovskis, a Tasmanian photographer whose photography was instrumental in saving the Tasmanian wilderness. Dombrovskis wrote, “an ethic of the land is needed because remaining wilderness is threatened by commercial exploitation that will destroy its value to future generations.”
“His [Dombrovskis'] philosophy — that one should take not only images that endure, but images that call for the wild world itself to endure — has become a guiding principle in my career as a photographer, and it is in this idea that the spirit of conservation photography lives,” writes Mittermeier.
It is the motivations of the photographer that defines conservation photography.
Susan Sontag once wrote, “A photograph can’t coerce. It won’t do the moral work for us. But it can start us on the way”. In response to Sontag, Mittermeier says, “Making the images will not get the job done. It merely gets us started. It is the passion, the ethical care, and the integrity that we put into them that defines the real character of the conservation photographer.”
