‘Photographer of the Year’: Images that urge you to be mindful towards the wild

'The Golden Horseshoe' by Laurent Ballesta, category: Portfolio Award. Images: courtesy Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2023 /Natural History Museum London
'The Golden Horseshoe' by Laurent Ballesta, category: Portfolio Award. Images: courtesy Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2023 /Natural History Museum London

Summary

A travelling exhibition of 100 photographs, which won at the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year in 2023, hopes to change mindsets towards conservation

At the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, dramatic images of the wild come into view. In one of the photos, a graceful gull soars effortlessly even as the frothing ocean forms a tempestuous backdrop. The story behind the image is rather dramatic as well. It was taken by Polish photographer Mateusz Piesial at the Arctic coast, in Iceland, even as he struggled to stand upright in the face of a gale. He was nearby to photograph the glaciers and the Aurora Borealis but found himself distracted by the beginnings of a violent storm. Weather warnings were issued and soon after he took the photograph, Piesial had to spend the night huddled in a car. He woke up in the morning to find that windows of vehicles nearby had been shattered by the debris flung at them by the high-speed winds. But to the gull, the storm was a part of nature’s changing cycles.

This image won him an award in the category, ‘Animals in their Environment’, at the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2023 competition held annually by the London-based Natural History Museum. Every year, 100 winning photographs, selected from nearly 50,000 entries from 95 countries, travel across the world. Images from the 59th edition, held last year, can now be viewed at the NMACC in the exhibition titled ‘Photographer of the Year’.

According to Doug Gurr, director, Natural History Museum, photography can be a catalyst for change, especially in the context of the current climate crisis and biodiversity loss. “‘The Wildlife Photographer of the Year’ exhibition is trying to inspire people to care about nature, and with a little bit of luck, they might just care enough to want to protect it," he adds. For instance, Piesial’s photo highlights how the rising temperatures are affecting the conditions around the ocean, with the gull’s range of habitation reduced by nearly fifty per cent.

Also read: Will the COP29 climate summit break the cycle of broken promises?

The stories behind the images on display range from joyous to heart wrenching.The ‘Photo Journalism’ category features a visual by Italian photographer Alessandro Falco of a badly injured jaguar after it suffered third-degree burns during a 2020-wildfire in Brazil. This image shows it waking up after having received medication at the wildlife conservation and rehabilitation centre, NEX Institute, in Corumba, Brazil. Its paws are tied in bandages, and the jaguar appears listless. There is anguish in its eyes; clearly the pain is immense. Such fires impact nearly a third of the Pantanal region, which is the world’s largest wetland located in the South American nation, affecting around 17 million animals in 2020.

'Ashes of a Wetland' by Raj Mohan, category: Wetlands, The Bigger Picture
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'Ashes of a Wetland' by Raj Mohan, category: Wetlands, The Bigger Picture

Certain images highlight the impact of human intervention on nature and loss of green cover in the name of development. For instance, Mexican photographer Fernando Constantino Martínez Belmar has shown a wide patch of protected rainforest being divided into two halves for a new cross-country railway line in his country. To arrive at the point from where he could launch his drone, Fernando travelled through an underground cave system. Celina Chien, storyteller and conservationist, who is also one of jury members of the competition, mentions on the website: “This photo captures the sheer magnitude and violence of deforestation. The key to this photo is the scale. Towering trees are made to look like spilled matchsticks. It instils almost a sense of panic—this laceration across the Earth that seems to go on forever into our future."

However, certain photos offer a lighter tone. For instance, Nima Sarikhani, based out of the UK, has taken a heart-warming photograph of a polar bear carving out a bed from a small iceberg before drifting off to sleep in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. She spent three days looking for polar bears through a wall of fog before the expedition vessel that she was on changed course. There, in a stretch featuring a sheet of ice, Sarikhani encountered two polar bears. Just before midnight, the younger male clambered onto a small iceberg and, using its paws, clawed out a bed. Then there is Kenyan photographer Mark Boyd's image of a lion cub being licked by two lionesses on either cheek. The lionesses had set off to hunt the evening before, leaving the cubs hidden overnight in dense bushes. Returning from their unsuccessful mission, they called the cubs out onto the open grassland, openly showering them with affection.

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The 2023 winner of ‘Photographer of the Year’ is for an image of the mysterious horseshoe crab by French underwater photographer and marine biologist Laurent Ballesta. In his pictures, the golden arthropod can be seen hugging the underwater muds of the Pangalan Island in the Philippines. It is tracked by three small fish, hoping the crab's movements will lead them to a meal hidden in the sediment. This horseshoe crab has survived for more than 100 million years but now faces habitat destruction and overfishing for its blood, mainly used to make vaccines. But in a relatively new marine reserve around Pangalan Island, it is being protected.

Viewers can also go through photos taken by six Indian winners from across various categories. Chennai-based Raj Mohan’s picture of a bird’s-eye view of the polluted marsh ecosystem in his citystands out.The photographer has been documenting the rampant problem of burning of garbage in this marshland. There has been growing concern about the decreasing number of birds populating the ecosystem. Mohan used a drone to assess the scale of the problem.

The Pallikaranai marsh is home to an abundance of wildlife, including 46 species of fish and 115 bird varieties, including the ibis and flamingos. In spite of being designated as a Ramsar Wetland Site of International Importance in 2022, tonnes of rubbish from the city of Chennai are dumped and burned here every day.

There are many such images in this exhibition of habitats, animals and creatures both familiar and unfamiliar. They tell stories of survival, devastation and hope and leave you empathetic towards the earth’s diverse ecosystems.

The exhibition can be viewed at the Art House, NMACC, till 5 January, 2025

Also read: Thota Vaikuntam: 50 years of painting daily life in rural Telangana

 

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