The Natural History Museum updated the display format this year – recently it has been very dark, whereas this time it was of a much lighter wood. This was much less oppressive, but also a little less immersive. Another recent trend (since the pandemic), also shown by the Taylor Wessing prize I visited on the same day, is to exhibit all the images online. While it is definitely preferable to see the exhibition, this is a relatively simple way for the institution to be more inclusive.
Given my recent research into the Anthropocene, I naturally focused on images that told stories of the interaction between animals and man or the man-made. A spectacled bear’s slim outlook contrasted the wild animal in the foreground with a scene of farming and development below. It was taken from a camera trap on a wildlife corridor – many, including my wife, question if this qualifies as wildlife photography (since the photographer is not present) although another view might be that it is a more accurate way of getting natural portrayal, since the cameraman is not influencing the picture.
Dmitry Kokh used a different solution – a low-noise drone – to photograph polar bears exploring the deserted settlement of Kolyuchin in Russia. The message of course is one of an animal out-of-place, although the human-like gesture of the lefthand bear hanging out of the window brings a gentle humour the raises the image further.
There was also a very disturbing image of a market trader ripping the wing bones out of a fruit bat with his teeth so that it can be wrapped for a customer – a risky manoeuvre given that the bats carry the Ebola virus.
But perhaps the most moving of these images was Ndakasi’s passing, a photograph of the last moments of a mountain gorilla as she lies in the arms of her carer of 13 years, Andre Bauma. The ranger rescued her at 2 months after her family was killed by a local charcoal mafia in the DRC. Having stayed and helped out a little at a lowland gorilla refuge in the Republic of Congo with a friend who worked there, the picture carried further meaning for me personally.
There were also several aerial shots of landscape loss, a familiar genre almost in its own right these days. Particularly successful was an image by a young photographer in the 15-17 year category. Adityakrishna Menon’s photograph of illegal waste disposal on the edge of a mangrove estuary was taken up by a documentary journalist and led to the site being cleaned up. This was if anything the theme of the display this year – that images can make an impact – highlighted by a short film about Robin Moor’s photograph of a Jamaican Iguana that played a role in protecting it from extinction from habitat loss. I do believe that such pictures can make a difference to specific situations, usually with a lot of other campaigning work besides. This is different from the pessimistic attitude of, say, Don McCullin, who gave up documenting conflict and disaster as he felt it made no difference. McCullin’s point was that such situations kept occurring, but this is rooted more in the human condition and should not, I feel, stop us fighting one issue at a time.
In addition Menon’s image made good use of the contrast at the margin, which seems obviously important for such a picture to work – in comparison Daniel Núñez’s image of the edge of Lake Amatitlán showed green algae growth next to a green forest, so did not operate in the same way for me, despite being a category winner.
Other images that stood out for me included Tiina Törmänen’s Underwater wonderland, of fish swimming through sheets of algae that resembled clouds – a very surreal picture that was more like a Magritte painting than a photograph.
Even more other-worldly was Tony Wu’s image of spawning sea star, that looked like a scene from a science fiction film. It’s always interesting when reality is stranger than fiction, plus it brushes up against questions regarding simulacra that are becoming more prevalent in my mind…
The winning image, by contrast, although it showed dramatic behaviour (of a ball of bees in a mating frenzy) was aesthetically less impressive, since the colour tones were largely similar throughout the image. Of course this is only one aspect of any image, but perhaps the winning one should have many facets?
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- Törmänen, T. (s.d.) Underwater Wonderland. At: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/wpy/gallery (Accessed 16.11.2022)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Level 3.1 Learning Log 