How Wildlife Photography Became Art
When it comes to photography books, it’s good advice not to judge a book by its title. I’ve owned more than a few with titles that just don’t match the contents.
How Wildlife Photography Became Art fits in that category. It promises, but ultimately doesn’t live up to its title.
If you are looking to learn how wildlife photography became art, or even if it truly is “art” there are no answers here.
On the other hand, you should definitely judge this book by it’s cover. The cover promises and delivers a book filled with photos of some of the best of wildlife photography.
Survey of Photos from ‘Wildlife Photographer of the Year’
The book’s subtitle offers the most accurate description, “Fifty-five years of Wildlife Photographer of the Year.”
For wildlife photographers seeking inspiration or for anyone who just enjoys great wildlife photography, this book offers an impressive selection of photographs drawn mostly from the London Museum of Natural History’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition that launched in 1965.
Early History and Vintage Images
The book actually begins its look at wildlife photography more than a century before 1965. It offers examples of some of the earliest efforts by photographers to use the new medium to capture photographs of wildlife, illustrate animal behavior and freeze images of wildlife for further study.
Among my favorites of the early images is a series of photographs of white storks flying to the nest by the German photographer Ottomar Anschütz in 1884. I recognize nearly identical poses in the white storks that I recently photographed at Doñana National Park in Spain more than 140 years later. For some reason I find it comforting to know that white storks have been cavorting like this since before the invention of photography and that, with any luck, they will be doing so long after we are gone.
Respect for the Pioneers
Any summary of the early history of wildlife photography is bound to give today’s wildlife photographers a healthy respect for the remarkable lengths that early photographers had to go through. Massive cameras, slow films and limited shutter speeds hampered all early photographers. Wildlife photographers had to cope with those challenges while trying to capture elusive, often fast moving and sometimes dangerous subjects. All in an era when little to no travel infrastructure existed in many parts of the world.
As technology has improved, it has become easier for many of us to take pictures that would have been nearly impossible just decades ago. Having begun my photography life shooting film, I am amazed at the advancements that digital photography made possible just in the past few decades.
I compare the challenges of pushing Kodak’s Tri-X to a mere ISO 1600, to the film speeds I regularly used recently while shooting color in the Ecuadorian rainforest. I struggle to remember what it was like rationing rolls of 36 exposure film when I can now fit thousands of images onto a card the size of a postage stamp. And, I now hand-hold a lens that zooms to 800mm, something I never imagined possible just a few years ago.
Still No Easy Task
With these technological changes it becomes harder and harder to get a unique shot, and most of us must be content to simply match the more challenging photos that our peers take. Even with all of these advances in technology, capturing a great nature or wildlife image remains frustratingly elusive.
For me, one of the joys of wildlife photography is that challenge of freezing a memorable moment with a wild subject that is simultaneously wary and indifferent to us. I’ve spent time watching herons as they patiently and methodically scour the edge of a pond as both of us wait for that fleeting instant when, with the spring of a neck and the flash of a beak, the bird has caught a meal and, if I am very lucky, I’ve caught a picture.
As photographers we are usually trying to “make” a picture. As wildlife photographers the challenge is frequently one of trying to “capture” a picture, realizing that most of circumstances are beyond our control and we have to rely heavily on luck.
The Pencil of Nature
The pioneering photographer Henry Fox Talbot titled his 1844 book, “The Pencil of Nature,” evoking the image of a drawing made “by the agency of Light alone, without any aid whatever from the artist’s pencil.”
There is an analogy to this in wildlife photography, where the photographer may attempt to control everything that can be controlled but ultimately it is this pencil of nature, in the form of a bird or other subject, that has the final say in “drawing” the image.
I think it is partly this intrinsic reliance on nature itself that makes it difficult to decide just where wildlife photography falls in the world of art. Attempting, as the book’s title does, to explain how wildlife photography became “art” is inevitably a near impossible task. If wildlife photography is art, when did it become so? Wasn’t it always art? If it is not art, then what is it.
True Artists
Almost no one would argue that when Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, two of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, turned their lenses to nature that they were not artists. Weston in particular seems to have delighted in proving that he could wrest fine art from almost any subject, whether it was a humble cabbage leaf, a field of tomato plants or, more famously, a pepper.
In our current age, when it seems that almost anything can make its way to a gallery wall and thus be declared art, the whole question seems less and less relevant. I understand the need to give a book a snappy title and certainly How Wildlife Photography Became Art, meets that objective. But I have a bias against the overuse of the word “art” and what I see as a too common effort to elevate an object to a higher plane, oftentimes with the goal of monetizing one’s work.
Most of the images in this book are beautiful. They raise our awareness of the natural world. All are examples of great craftsmanship. Looking at them enriches our lives. That should be enough.
Buy How Wildlife Photography Became Art, Fifty-five years of Wildlife Photographer of the Year on Amazon
Note, there is a newer edition of this book, that is subtitled Sixty years of Wildlife Photographer of the Year. It includes updated pictures from the last five years, but the substance doesn’t seem to differ markedly from the reviewed edition.
Using these Amazon Links helps support this website. Thanks!