Not all conservation photographers are built alike. Some are a jack-of-all-trades, while others are committed to a certain cause. Some focus on landscapes, others people, and others wildlife. Some shoot in black and white, others shoot in color. They shoot from air, sea and land.
Karl Ammann
Karl Ammann is one of those photographers dedicated to a particular cause, focusing on the illegal bushmeat trade in Africa. His photographs are shocking and disturbing. You know his photos are hardcore when the link to his photo gallery on National Geographic says “Warning: Photos include depictions of butchered animals.” One of the photos in the gallery shows a severed gorilla head in a frying pan, next to a bunch of bananas. A photo of his featured in the September/October 2007 issue of American Photo magazine depicts an emaciated chimpanzee orphan, a victim of the bushmeat trade. Time Magazine writes, “Karl Ammann’s photography books are too gruesome for your average coffee table.” In 2007, Time Magazine named Ammann a Hero of the Environment, crediting him with almost single-handedly raising awareness of the issue of bushmeat, “the slaughter and consumption of wild — and often protected — animals.”
On his website, Ammann writes:
“Like most wildlife photographers/film makers, I concentrated for two decades on illustrating the beauty and diversity I found out there [Africa]. It is what sells and it is what supposedly gets people to want to conserve it. However for the last decade I have become increasingly disillusioned with this approach to ‘conservation’. Although clearly only a minor component, it was and is not contributing to effecting any real changes. I actually might be doing the opposite, giving viewers/readers a false sense of environmental security.
I felt I needed to go beyond what I call the ‘World in Order’ imagery and present some of the other sides of the coin. I called it the “2×4 approach” of hitting readers/viewers over the head with some of the harsher realities. To say that it was and is a frustrating task is putting it mildly.
While the print media and its editors were generally more open minded, the worlds documentary outlets were mostly interested in success stories, happy endings and heros. Packaging the three was pretty much an outright sale. Destruction, finger pointing, eco criminals, conservation failure was and is not considered to be ‘entertainment’ plus it brings into the picture the real editors: the network lawyers which have no problem with the happy ending and success stories.
What was even more distressing was that the conservation establishment seems to be happy to tie in with this approach. Problems are welcome because lots of money can be raised offering ‘solutions’. However the fact is that most of these solutions do not seem to be working and nobody seems to be interested in independent audits or establishing if a different approach might be necessary/possible. I call it ‘Band Aid Conservation’: The natural world is dying of a terminal cancer and all we get to hear is ‘write a check we will deal with it.’ However this generally is not by accepting the realities and underlying causes and suggesting that maybe time has come for ‘radio or chemo therapy’. Rather, it is peddling another rather meaningless band aid in form of another protected area (paper parks), research, pilot, or community conservation project.”
Then the internet came along giving people like myself more of an opportunity to voice view points outside this envelope of censorship I found with the mainstream media – albeit talking to a still limited and it would appear already largely converted audience.”
Read more about Ammann’s views in his interview with National Geographic.
Nick Brandt
Nick Brandt‘s black and white photographs of African wildlife stand out from the rest. The photos are hauntingly beautiful and lonely, as if the animal or animals captured in the frame are the only ones left on Earth. The high-contrast portraits are elegant and clean, and are reminiscent of the mother and baby photos that hang in household nurseries, gentle. There is a sadness in the quiet loneliness of Brandt’s work.
Clyde Butcher
What Brandt does for wildlife, Clyde Butcher does for landscapes. Although his work usually features Florida’s landscapes, his “America the Beautiful” exhibition features sites across the United States, and is reminiscent of the work of Ansel Adams. With the determination of William Henry Jackson, Butcher takes his large-format photography equipment deep into the Everglades and back areas of southern Florida. From the wide expanses of land to the thick brambles of swamp, Butcher’s work display the real Florida.
