Beyond 1,000 words

“[Our culture is] convinced of the superiority of written or propositional language, that devalues sensory, affective and kinetic forms of communication precisely because they often baffle verbal resolution.”
—Barbara Stafford, Good Looking: Essays on the Virtue of Images

The power of non-verbal communication aids conservation. In 1964, Carleton Watkins' images of Yosemite Valley aided the establishment of America's third national park. In more recent years, few of us were unmoved as images of starving polar bears began heralding the very real consequences of the climate crisis.

Commonly, wildlife photographers and filmmakers seek to capture animal behaviour. A powerful capture inspires feeling in the viewer – empathy, awe, shock, sadness, joy, and so on.

When we try to achieve the same effect with words, we turn to evocative language to conjure something in the reader’s mind. This is perhaps why so many articles on human-nature connection begin with a quote from Aldo Leopold, Henry David Thoreau or Rachel Carson – all of whom appealed to the heart as well as the head, and dared to take an ethical stance.

I could claim that photography is a more honest form of communication than poetry, because it captures the very light that hits its subjects. It's certainly faster. But no transfer of knowledge is unmediated, unframed, or without bias. Even a web cam on an eagle's nest, devoid of words, untouched by Photoshop, has been sited there because someone deemed eagles more interesting than earthworms.

Why look at animals?

John Berger discusses our strange relationship with animals in his essay Why look at animals? Animals, he explains, are like us and not like us. By watching them, we can recognise our similarities and differences.

We cuddle them, we kill them. We celebrate them in kid’s books and confine them to cages. We protect some and squish others. Animals have been symbols in human culture for thousands of years, and we’ve shared our environment with them for longer than we haven’t. In short, animals are fascinating.

History of wildlife photography

Photography's invention in the early 19th century offered unprecedented accuracy in visual records. Early wildlife photos were of stuffed animals, but faster shutter speeds allowed us to freeze a moving subject in rich detail. This mastery of time gave us access to previously unseen worlds, and opened up possibilities to learn about the world. Yet modern wildlife photography has more of its roots in sport hunting than in scientific exploration.

Early wildlife photographs functioned as trophies of the hunt. They demonstrated the same “manly” skills required to find a wild animal, additionally proving an ability to get closer and set up cumbersome gear. Many shot their subject with a bullet after taking its picture.

National Geographic first published photographs of living wild animals in 1906. They'd been taken by George Shiras III, a pioneer of hunting with the camera. Shiras’ photographs had already been published as hunting trophies in sporting magazines; it was only later that they began to be appreciated as works of art.

Today’s wildlife photographers have mixed intents, including truthful documentary and artful expression. They might still be trophy hunters, and some amateurs can be careless in their behaviour around sensitive wildlife, causing harm. But most intend to celebrate the natural world, portraying it as beautiful and precious.

Power

“To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge – and therefore, like power.”
—Susan Sontag, On Photography

Photography can be voyeurism. While this mostly applies to photographs of people, there's no doubt a peculiar power differential in wildlife photography too. The subject may be unaware, but the sensitive photographer can feel it. The moment an animal becomes our subject, we've changed our relationship with it. This is why I mention feeling uneasy in Rhapsody for a Rock Wren.

There are also consequences to showing wildlife photographs and footage. Insta-famous spots become overcrowded, people disturb wildlife to get a shot, and perceptions get skewed, eg, when we see a rare animal over and over again. Photographic images give us a false sense of familiarity and knowledge. But seeing an image of something is not the same as understanding it. We've seen the blue dot from space, yet nature's full complexity remains unfathomed.

We must use the power of photography ethically.