LOOK INSIDE: Seeing it All

On the cover: An iceberg in Antarctica’s Lemaire Channel, photographed by Camille Seaman.

An uphill climb for a pair of chinstrap penguins, photographed by Daisy Gilardini.

SEEING IT ALL

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Foreward by Sylvia Earle

Rhonda Rubinstein: Seeing through her eyes

Rebecca Solnit: Seeing is the beginning of caring

Ami Vitale For us to thrive, the animals too, must thrive.

Britta Jaschinski Our insatiable demand for wildlife products is pushing animals to extinction.

Camille Seaman Meet your ancestors in every aspect of nature, large and small.

Cristina Mittermeier The ocean is the solution to climate change.

Daisy Gilardini Cute and cuddly make the case for conservation at Earth’s extremes.

Esther Horvath Witness the indisputable science of climate change in the Arctic.

Jen Guyton Change starts at the convergence of culture and environment.

Jo-Anne McArthur Every animal is an individual: a complex, sentient being.

Morgan Heim Photography elevates the controversial, misunderstood, and underappreciated.

Suzi Eszterhas Revealing glimpses of newborns in the wild inspire our humanity.

Tui De Roy On the world’s most biodiverse archipelago, there’s so much to save, yet so much to lose.

Afterword. And pictures. 156 158

Taking Action

Recognized as a ‘Living Legend ’ by the Library of Congress, Dr. Sylvia Earle is the President and Chairman of Mission Blue and a National Geographic Society Explorer in Residence. She has authored more than 225 publications and logged over 7,500 hours of underwater expeditions, including leading the first team of women aquanauts in 1970. As an oceanographer, and explorer, her research concerns the ecology and conservation of marine ecosystems and development of technology for access to the deep sea.

Seeing our moment in time

Foreward by Sylvia Earle

This hauntingly beautiful volume is exceptional in so many ways: the artistic and technical quality of the storytelling images, the remarkable personal journeys of the contributors and, perhaps most striking, the awareness that what is presented here could not have been achieved by anyone, anywhere, until right about now. Unless urgent action is taken very soon, most of the creatures portrayed here may not exist in the wild in a few decades.

In just half a century, advances in technology have made it possible to navigate to, and spend meaningful time in, places that were previously inaccessible, with equipment— including photographic gear—that would make pioneering explorers and photographers gasp with wonder. Ironically, more and more people now are able to be in the presence of fewer and fewer wild animals in patches of wilderness squeezed within increasingly tamed spaces, on land and sea.

In late 2022, 188 nations pledged to safeguard in a natural state at least 30 percent of their land and freshwater systems and 30 percent of the ocean by 2030. It’s an ambitious goal since at the time only 15 percent of Earth’s land mass and three percent of the ocean globally experienced a high degree of official protection from destructive human uses. Current trends will result in the loss of more than a million species by the time today’s children have grandchildren.

There is still time (though not a lot) to shift from foreseeable 21st-century tipping points of loss to decisive turning points of recovery and eventual harmony with the fabric of life that underpins our existence. Knowledge is the key to securing an enduring future for ourselves and all that we care about: our health, wealth, security, and, most critically, our very lives.

With knowing comes caring, and with caring comes hope that we can and will find a place for ourselves within the natural, living systems that set Earth apart as a small, blue miracle suspended within the magnificent but extremely hostile universe beyond. The evidence—facts, figures, charts, and graphs—have made it clear that our planet is in trouble, and therefore so are we.

Since the 1950s, more has been learned than during all preceding history about who we are, where we have come from, and where we might be headed. But at the same time, more of Earth’s ancient systems have been lost, displaced, or consumed by our growing numbers. Knowledge alone has not been enough to inspire the actions needed to shift the trajectory of decline.

Bravo to the 11 champions profiled here. They are using the power of art, of empathy, of connecting “us” with “them,” with an underlying message of hope that we can and will care enough and act soon enough for tomorrow’s children to not just wistfully view beautiful images of wondrous extinct creatures, but to experience a robust reality of dolphins, elephants, pangolins, and people living together in peace.

At a time when smartphones enable almost everyone to take photographs of almost everything, what makes the images here, the photographers, and their stories so compelling? Notably, most professional photographers, and especially most wildlife photographers are men. Does gender matter? Is there a way to tell by looking at a photograph whether a woman or a man was behind the lens? On viewing images by a noted female photographer, Gilbert Grosvenor, for years the editor of National Geographic magazine, suggested that, “Women often see things about life and ways of people that a man would not notice.” If so, what might those things be? Do men see things a woman would not notice?

One thing is certain. The images in this book were created by mothers, sisters, aunts, and daughters, each an individual who did not wait for society to catch up with their need to be creative, their drive to apply their knowledge and skills, and their keen desire to foster harmony between humans and nature. They have not only excelled in the art of making images that speak volumes, they have done so while dealing with resistance not experienced by their male colleagues, with skill, humor, and the grit to make a difference, no matter what.

Blades of bull kelp drift at the sunlit surface of the Salish Sea, off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Kelp forests are home to a remarkable array of life and act like oceanic lungs, absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and exhaling it back as oxygen.

Photograph by Cristina Mittermeier.

Rhonda Rubinstein is a creative director and curator who applies the capacity of design, photography, and language to express the critical ideas of this planetary moment. She works in all media in her role as Creative Director of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, where in 2014 she cofounded the BigPicture Natural World Photography initiative. Her previous book is Wonders: Spectacular Moments in Nature Photography

Seeing through her eyes

A deep sadness came over me when I heard the news about Pikin. We were immersed in the production of this book, checking facts, when contributing photographer Jo-Anne McArthur wrote to say that the young lowland gorilla had died. Jo-Anne’s tender photo captured a moment in transit as Pikin clung trustingly to her caretaker, Appolinaire, his arms gently surrounding and soothing her. Pikin was no longer living a better life in a primate sanctuary in Cameroon. Her story had ended.

As my heart dropped, I wondered why I had become so attached to an animal I had never met, and known only from a black-and-white photo. Then I realized. I had seen Pikin through the eyes of her compassionate caretaker as manifested through the camera of a truly empathetic photographer. That intimate image helped me see the gorilla as an individual and become curious about her hero caretaker and the organization that rescued her.

I was seeing it all differently.

Which is what this book is all about. Photographers often see what other people don’t, and when they have borne witness we get to see it through their eyes. Photographers bring their subjects into focus, framed by their own ideas and unique perspectives.

At this critical moment in time, we need to see ourselves and our planet— and the inextricable connection between those two entities—through a new lens. We invited 11 groundbreaking photographers to share their philosophy and photography in this time capsule, commonly referred to as a book. The photographers, whether renowned for their work in documentary, wildlife, or conservation photography, expose how we—humans, animals, nature— are living together in these precarious times. Each photographer’s concise manifesto reflects their insights from seeing and documenting the world— from deep oceans to distant islands. These 11 photographers are women. Their images reflect their unique and compassionate worldview of an interconnected planet.

But we can also see ourselves reflected in these photographs. Not just in the wildlife caretakers, researchers, and other humans. Nor in the common ancestry we share with a playful young orangutan or the emotional connection felt with devoted penguin parents. But beyond that. Humans are everywhere. Or at least traces of us are— microplastics have been found from Arctic ice cores to the bottom of the ocean. And when we look at the images in this book, we can see how humans are driving species to extinction, turning animals into commodities, and simply ignoring them as road casualties. It is hard to view a beautiful photograph of an iceberg without reflecting on how we are quickening its disintegration.

Portrait of an Adélie penguin, at home in Antarctica by Daisy Gilardini.

by Rhonda Rubinstein

Almost a century ago, Dorothea Lange, a pioneering female photographer in the early days of photojournalism, photographed a hopeless woman huddled with her children in order to raise awareness of the urgent need for national aid during the Great Depression. Within days of the publication of Migrant Mother in 1936, the government sent 20,000 pounds of food to the farmworkers. Lange’s unique and compassionate eye produced one of the most iconic, change-inspiring photographs of the 20th century.

The image was featured in the seminal Family of Man exhibit at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1955, which Lange helped her friend, Edward Steichen, curate. (Today, one might wonder about conceiving a family without women.) That ambitious exhibit aimed to show the universality of the human condition and relationships, from birth to death, with images selected from around the world.

In the 21st century, the compassion, community, and connection to other people that Lange and the Family of Man revealed must now be extended to our more distant relatives: animals, plants, and the planet itself. That is also visible in these pages. Ami Vitale’s formidable photograph of Sudan—the last male northern white rhino—as he lay dying with his caretaker Jojo, was one of only two frames created by Ami during a moment of mourning. The image became the cover of National Geographic and, seen around the globe, has become an iconic representation of the tragedy of extinction.

These glimpses of peril exist amidst portfolios of profound beauty. We can easily revel in the joy of sea lions playing among schools of brightly colored fish, or admire the monochrome majesty of the penguin on this very page. It’s harder to look at the mistreatment of animals, the unnecessary deaths, or to accept the impending disappearance of a species. But the beauty of these photographs enables us to look at what we’d rather not see. They connect the seen to the hidden, abundance to disappearance, icebergs to Indigenous portraits, sanctuaries to scientists, and head to heart.

Seeing it all, clearly, unflinchingly, so that others can viscerally see, feel, and understand what is really happening outside their own frame of view. I may never visit Cameroon, but I now know how close it is. That intimate look invites us to really see the state of our planet and hear the compelling arguments for knowing, caring, and for life itself.

Rebecca Solnit is co-editor of the forthcoming climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibilit y and many other books including Orwell’s Roses; Hope in the Dark ; and A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. She writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of Oil Change International, and works with other climate groups as well.

by Rebecca Solnit

A veterinarian in a panda suit conducts a check-up on a young panda at Hetaoping Wolong Panda Center, China.

Photograph by Ami Vitale.

Seeing is the beginning of caring

The Chinese veterinarian is dressed from head to toe in a grubby, droopy panda costume, not to revel, but to work. They cradle a giant panda cub, using the costume to prevent this young member of a vulnerable species from becoming habituated to human presence. People working with critically endangered young California condors also use a disguise for the same purpose—to meet another species more than halfway, to step out of our humanity in one way, to step into it in another. Throughout this book are images of deep care for a deeply damaged nature, of humans working to repair what humans have done.

These are visions of change, and of many kinds of change. The immediate subject of some of the photographs is climate change, but habitat loss and degraded ecosystems underlie many of them. They also document changes in wildlife photography that reflect far larger transformations in how we imagine the natural world and our relationship to it, and even what it means to be human. It’s hard to say if the gender of the photographers gathered here is a cause or a consequence of this shift, but in some ways they’re inseparable.

Nature photography emerged as color photography was becoming a more viable technology and as environmental consciousness was rising. (I distinguish nature photography from landscape photography—the former is about life and living systems, the latter mostly about spaces and forms.) Perhaps the first great artist in that vein was Eliot Porter, the scientist, birdwatcher, and sometimes Sierra Club board member, whose images often strove to capture the complexity of relationships between species and the underlying power and order of natural systems. His first books, published by the Sierra Club in the early 1960s, had an enormous impact, inviting people to see the natural world anew.

His subtle, science-informed vision gave way to spectacle and a simpler kind of photography that codified the beauty and neglected the complexity. This type of nature photography, dominant until recently, seemed to have a lot of unwritten rules. The goal of the images that adorned countless calendars and magazines seemed to be to portray nature as a realm apart. The ideal image represented pristine nature with no sign of human presence either in person or as traces of the built or altered environment. The images might show seasons but they avoided evidence of historical time and change. The animals in them were beautiful, thriving, remote.

The underlying idea, when this work was deployed by environmental and conservation groups, was to somehow inspire people with the beauty of the natural world to support protection of these places. The images did this, but they also reinforced a number of problematic ideas, including

A rescued 12-day-old orphaned Chinese pangolin sleeping in the hands of her keeper at Taipei Zoo, Taiwan.

Photograph by Suzi Eszterhas.

that there was a place called nature somehow apart from culture, a separate realm. And that anything not pristine was compromised and hardly worth looking at. Nature was not the moss in the cracks of the sidewalk or the backyard birds or the relationship between all the parts, but something both enchanting and mostly out of reach. I have long thought of it as the Madonnawhore complex, since it imagined places in the binary of pristine and ruined. The idealized places were somehow always ‘out there’, far away, separate, and even the language was full of terms such as virgin and untouched. Anything less was rejected.

If nature was female, passive, pure, it made sense that exploring her was man’s lot. The United States’ 1964 Wilderness Act was justly hailed as a great achievement, but its language was full of assumptions we no longer share. It declared, “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” This phrasing, normal in its time, always prompted me to joke that it says nothing about woman, but the biases in it are serious and they’re not just gendered, they’re racial.

The North American idea of wilderness as a place apart was always predicated on the erasure of Indigenous people, on turning their homelands into places in which humans did not belong. That idea was then imposed on Africa to try to protect wildlife by driving out and denying the rights of the people who had coexisted with these other species for countless millennia. And the stories told about these places often involved them being ‘discovered’ by the first white man to show up, further erasing the first peoples in these places.

This mental segregation, once so powerful in the United States, had myriad devastating consequences, including the once-widespread idea that humans cannot live in peace with nature, that we are separate from it, that we do not belong in it. This in turn begat the idea that a healthy ecosystem had no human involvement, which meant both forgetting indigenous activities, from hunting and harvesting to fire management, that were crucial to the health of those places and denying Native peoples the right to continue these practices. Recognition of their presence in many places formerly called wilderness, from the Arctic to the tropics, has shifted non-native understandings of both nature and culture. It has taught us to recognize that humans are not necessarily a destructive or disruptive force,

A Border Force officer with a confiscated polar bear hide at Heathrow Airport, London, UK.

Photograph by Britta Jaschinski.

Rebecca Solnit: Seeing is the beginning of caring

and that there are many kinds of relationships to nature.

This sterile, segregated vision fell apart in recent decades. Those best and worst manifestations, told, in some ways, the same story: we are not separate from nature, it is not a place apart, and the human presence is everywhere. At its best, this was the indigenous vision that settler societies belatedly embraced as they recognized that science confirmed the inseparability and interdependence of all living things. At its most devastating, it was evidence of human impact even on the most remote places—PCBs in polar bears’ milk, a hole in the ozone layer, ocean depletion and acidification, and then the depredations of climate change.

If one thing ties these images together, it’s an ethos of non-separation. There’s no separation between the human and the non-human in the many images of caregiving, interaction, relationship, and encounter, from the diver with the hammerhead shark to the ranger mourning a dying rhinoceros and the memorial photographs documenting flowers brought to show respect for wildlife—raccoon, snake, deer—killed by cars. We see in them the damage humans have done; we see in many of them the repair that others are trying to effect. There are still images of wild creatures living as they have before, but the captions tell us they live in protected reserves and parks. In one poignant image Suzi Eszterhas made, a curled-up, 12-day-old pangolin is cradled in gloved hands, part of a captive breeding program. But Britta Jaschinski shows us the grotesquerie of rare creatures turned into rugs, coats, trophies, even as she shows them in the storehouses of the institutions that confiscate them. Humans in these photographs are not all heroes or villains; the depicted relationships between individuals and nature range from brutal to tender, from killing to healing.

Our species now manages the planet. We did it badly, ignorantly, not knowing until recently how the accumulations of carbon dioxide and methane from our burning of fossil fuels would alter the climate, not taking into account how depredations here and incursions there would add up to dangerous levels of habitat loss for species and ecosystems, ignoring how chemicals that did something useful in their initial application so often go on to do something deadly down the line. Too many people with too much power didn’t think ecologically—that is, in terms of interconnected systems. They didn’t recognize the delicate orchestration of innumerable parts that makes up the symphony of the biosphere. Learning to see that is crucial to learning to care for it. These photographs are instructions in that vision.

A mallard—likely killed while flying in to land—on a road near Warrenton, Oregon.

Photograph by Morgan Heim.

by Indre Viskontas

This image is ripe for pareidolia, our instinctual drive to see meaningful objects or icons in the abstract. What can you see?

Antarctica by Cristina Mittermeier.

Seeing takes so much more than vision

Close your eyes and imagine a sunset. What do you see? Vague shapes and colors? Or something much more specific? Like the reflection of the setting sun sparkling along the tops of white-tipped waves in a turquoiseblue ocean, fine white sand framed by swaying palm trees. The vividness of our minds’ eye lies along a spectrum—from the total absence of imagery if you have a condition called ‘aphantasia’ to the clarity and detail of a highresolution photograph if you’re someone with ‘hyperphantasia’.

Psychologists have only recently discovered the diversity of our inner mental worlds, at least when it comes to visual imagery. It turns out that it’s not just developmental differences, like autism, that lie on a spectrum —it’s many, if not most, of the workings of our minds. That’s especially true when it comes to perception, the process by which our brains interpret information from our senses and build our subjective experience.

Our brains are bathed in a vat of neurochemicals, encased in our skulls, with only a few tiny portals through which the outside world is sensed. At the backs of our eyeballs, our retinas are a flat sheet of photo-sensitive cells, bleached by light. We only see a small portion of our field of view—about the size of a thumbnail held at arm’s length—clearly. Everywhere else, we are legally blind.

To compensate for this impoverished ability to sense the outside, our brains have adapted to fill in details, make educated guesses, and build a model of the world in our minds. Much of the cortical surface of the brain is dedicated to this architectural feat—for those of us who can see, vision takes up about a fifth of the cortex. Whether you’re looking at a scene, remembering one you’ve seen before, or conjuring up an imaginary one, this same network of brain regions buzzes with activity.

What is all that cortical real estate for? We have the illusion that our eyes are clear windows to the outside world, but sensation—capturing light bouncing off objects around us—is only the first step. Visual perception, the subjective experience of seeing, is an active feature of the brain, dependent on our past experience, our current state, what is important to us, and many other factors. That’s why each of us looking at the images in this book will have a unique interpretation, one that might even change with time.

From the mind’s perspective, looking and imagining are close cousins, both relying on the brain’s ability to fill in the blanks. But psychologists and

Dr. Indre Viskontas is a neuroscientist, opera stage director and science communicator. As a scientist, she has published more than 50 original papers and chapters related to the neural basis of memory and creativity, including several seminal articles in top scientific journals. She hosts the award-winning Cadence podcast and the popular science podcast Inquiring Minds, which has been downloaded more than 14 million times.

Indre Viskontas: Seeing takes so much more than vision

neuroscientists who study memory and perception have known for decades that our brains do not dispassionately sense and remember the world—we build internal mental models that are influenced by our past, our present, and the type of future we hope to partake in.

To build these models, we need a scaffold or a blueprint, a set of plans that gives our minds some direction. We construct these scaffolds over time. A baby is born with very poor vision. But over time, her interactions with her environment give her brain cells purpose. She undergoes a period of braincell proliferation—an explosion of cells and connections between them, like the sprouting up of seedlings in nutrient-rich soil. With experience, those connections and cells that are underutilized are pruned, just as a good gardener pulls weeds to allow flowers and useful plants to thrive. If there are things in the environment worth looking at, she learns to see.

What and how photographers choose to photograph, and how they edit their images, is an intimate glimpse into their mind’s eye—their inner mental model of the world. They show us with their tools and talent where we should focus our gaze, giving us an indication of what they felt was important or meaningful. The photographer crafts the visual experience and a scaffold for a model that the viewer builds that goes beyond the purely visual and into the realm of meaning-making. How we create meaning from our experiences is one of the most individual and magical things our brains do. What moves us emotionally or captures our attention is a reflection of our values, our identity, our hopes and dreams, as well as our fears. Just as the vividness of our visual imagination, our ability to maintain attentional focus, the intensity of our

Polar bear and cub in Wapusk National Park, Canada, by Daisy Gilardini.

Many mammal babies share similar features—big eyes, heads that seem oversized for their bodies, short stocky noses and few sharp angles, triggering our compassion instinct, and giving us the pleasurable feeling of seeing something cute.

emotions and our values all lie along many spectra, the relationship between gender identity and brain structure and function is also nuanced. On average, there are measurable differences between male and female brains, just as individuals whose gender identity falls outside of this dichotomy also have differences. But there is no way by which we can look at an individual brain and confidently assign it an identity, gender or otherwise. Gender differences in the brain, just like in behavior or preferences, are a mosaic—every brain will have a unique pattern of features, just as every photographer has her own eye.

Wildlife photography has been dominated by male photographers for decades. If men and women have different brains, on average, what have we missed by skewing male? By filling the pages of this book with wildlife photographers who are also women, we see the diversity and richness of 11 unique mind’s eyes. But we also see a pattern of merging aesthetic beauty with evidence of attachment, a strategic use of ‘cuteness’ to encourage support for conservation and to trigger the protective instinct in all of us, and a compositional signature that makes each photographer’s work distinct.

There are cues in a photograph that our brain uses to build a three-dimensional percept from a two-dimensional object, such as perspective, occlusion, and shadows. But what we know about the place, the subject, the photographer, also influences what we see. If I had to reduce our brains to one task, it would be to predict the future—to simulate possible outcomes given the current circumstances so that we can act in our best interests. Our memories are not accurate because that’s not what they’re for. We can pull apart a rich, detailed memory and re-use its components—the time, the place, the consequences—to imagine possible futures.

Conservation photographers help us see these details, ones we may have missed, by focusing their lenses and guiding our attention, and thereby give us a better sense of what might come. In medicine, to gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of the brain, sometimes a case study is a richer source of information, a more complete one, than a largescale study that washes out differences between patients. When we zoom into the specific, we often find hope, resilience, and wonder.

So, too, these photographers capture precise moments in time, moments that illuminate the richness of the wildlife with which we share this planet, as well as the connection we feel to other sentient beings, beings whose nervous systems evolved to optimize their ability to survive and reproduce. Our nervous systems all came from the same ancestor—a lowly single-celled microorganism that, instead of floating passively in a primordial soup, began to move, intentionally, toward a better future.

Mobula rays flocking to the Sea of Cortez in the Gulf of California by Cristina Mittermeier.

Patterns, especially fractal ones, are aesthetically pleasing. In nature, laws that repeat at different scales give us a sense that there is an order to things, which is deeply satisfying.

Begin here

For us to thrive, the animals too, must thrive.

Ami Vitale

believes in the importance of living the story. From Montana, she has traveled to over 100 countries, where she has lived in mud huts, contracted malaria, and donned a panda suit. Her goal: To amplify the voices of unsung heroes on the conservation frontline.

Bryan Liscinsky

Ami Vitale

Overleaf: A giant panda plays peek-a-boo in Wolong National Nature Reserve, Sichuan, China. This enigmatic animal—a vegetarian member of the bear family—only became known to science in the 1920s. Since then, the devastation of its native bamboo forests has reduced the wild population to fewer than 2,000 individuals. Today, however, Chinese conservationists have brought a ray of hope by slowing habitat destruction, reducing poaching, and learning—at last—how to breed pandas in captivity.

In 2018, award-winning photographer Ami Vitale got a call that one of her best-loved subjects, a northern white rhinoceros called Sudan, was dying. Sudan was world famous for being the last male of his subspecies, and Vitale had been documenting him for nine years. She was first introduced to him and three other northern white rhinos as they were being readied to be airlifted from a Czech zoo and taken to Kenya in a last-ditch attempt to save the species from extinction. At the time, there were only eight individuals known to be alive and they were all in zoos. The hope was that the open air and room to roam might stimulate them to breed.

Sadly, the females were not able to bear young. And now 45-year-old Sudan, once dubbed ‘the most eligible bachelor in the world’, had reached the end of his long life.

Vitale dashed to Kenya to photograph her old friend one last time. She describes the scene: “It was very quiet. Like the whole world was mourning the passing of this ancient species, whose kin roamed the Earth for 50 million years. The only sound was the cry of a go-away bird and the muffled sobbing of his keepers, who cared for Sudan like their own children.”

On an overcast day in Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, Kenya, keeper John Kamara shares an affectionate moment with Kilifi, an 18-month-old black rhino. Kalifi was one of three calves hand-raised by Kamara, who spends 12 hours every day watching over his precious charges. Today, thanks to individuals like Kamara, Kenya’s black rhino population has more than doubled from its 1987 low point of just 400. Vitale’s images tell the stories of people around the world who, like Kamara, dedicate their lives to protecting endangered wildlife.

Vitale developed a tough skin working as a conflict photographer for a decade, covering war, natural disasters, famines, and revolutions in places like Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Kashmir. But when she recalls that day, years later, she holds back tears. “Watching a creature die—who is the last of his kind—is something I hope never to experience again. It felt like witnessing our own demise. The demise of humanity. This is what we are doing to ourselves.”

That sacred moment reinforced a vocation Vitale discovered mid-career. A mission to tell the stories of people all over the world who are taking a stand to protect wild places and the amazing species that live there.

Going from war photographer to conservation photographer and documentary maker wasn’t as big a leap as it might seem. Vitale says that every story of conflict is, at its heart, a story about the scarcity of natural resources, such as water, arable land, oil, precious minerals, or rare earths. “We often describe the tensions that lead to armed conflict in terms of regional issues, or religious or political disagreements,” she says. “But what I saw is that it’s always, always, the demands placed on ecosystems that drive those conflicts and are at the root of human suffering.”

Focusing on ecosystems under pressure, and efforts to tackle the threats, seemed more important to Vitale than continuing to catalog the horrors of human behavior. While war stories might lead the news agenda, conservation stories are arguably

“I have seen remarkable women working for their communities. We’re hardwired differently—to make the world a better place, not just for ourselves and our families, but for all of society.”

Members of the local community at Kenya’s Lewa Wildlife Conservancy get hands-on with a sedated black rhino, which has been hand-raised after poachers killed its mother. Vitale explains how few people in Kenya get the opportunity to see the wildlife that lives around them, and how indigenous communities—so often caught on the frontline between poachers and game wardens—seldom receive the attention they deserve. “I was moved by how much Kenyans feel that wildlife is part of their earthly inheritance,” she says.

more urgent and more crucial. They are also more complicated to tell.

“The question is: how do we help people understand how precious, how vulnerable, and how interconnected our world really is? And how do we communicate that the survival of wildlife is critical to the continued health of our planet, our lives—and also our souls? Our wellbeing, our food, our very existence depends on us being able to live in harmony with nature. Never before has it been so clear that our fate is inextricably interlinked with that of the life around us.”

Vitale also wants to challenge preconceptions and reveal deeper truths— global conservation is not black and white. In China, Vitale documented the work of a dedicated group of scientists who have helped giant pandas bounce back from the brink of extinction. “Their success is due to a successful captive breeding program, habitat protection, and the creation of wildlife corridors,” she says. “It’s a story of hope.”

She highlights the stories of people— and especially women—who have found ways to live peacefully with wildlife, and of efforts, large and small, to slow the dire effects of ecosystem collapse and species loss caused by climate change.

“I gravitate towards women because everywhere I go, I see women who have very little, yet still make a huge difference for the planet in their communities. I’ve come to believe that women are hardwired differently, that something inside us wants to make the world a better place, not just for ourselves and our families but for all of society.” And of course, for the future.

She hopes that telling their stories will give others courage. “When you see a woman find her voice and her purpose by protecting the planet, it reminds us all that we cannot be complacent and that we can do anything we set our minds to. We need to follow her example and play our parts in changing the course we are currently on.”

Head rhino keeper Zacharia Mutai at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in northern Kenya cares for Najin, one of the last two northern white rhinos on the planet. Hope for this unique subspecies rests with the BioRescue project, whose scientists have created 22 embryos using a series of complex procedures—from oocyte collection in Kenya to in-vitro fertilization and cryopreservation in Italy. If all goes well, these embryos will be implanted into surrogate mothers selected from a population of southern white rhinos. Meanwhile, extinction teeters on a knife edge.

“Greed, ignorance, and lack of empathy are destroying the planet.”

The ocean is the solution to climate change.

With gusting winds and ambient air temperatures well below freezing, Lei Wang and Michael Angelopoulos of the MOSAiC expedition examine a sea ice core. Drilling tiny holes at regularly spaced intervals, they measure the temperature with a digital sensor. This work will help estimate the sea ice’s permeability for gas exchange. “Under such harsh conditions, you have to be much more careful with everything,” explains Horvath. “Even recording the temperatures in a field book is a challenge.”

Scientist

Overleaf: A Puma drone is tested from the bow of US Coast Guard icebreaker Healy. Increasing traffic in the Arctic Ocean has created a need for more eyes on everything from wildlife populations to military activity. With the rapid decline in the extent and thickness of sea ice, this ocean may well become ice-free in summer during the 21st century, strongly affecting the planet’s weather and climate.

Holger Siebert of the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research launches a tethered helium-filled balloon at Flyger’s Hut, part of the Villum Research Station, about 2km (1.3 miles) south of Station Nord, Greenland. Scientists at Leipzig and Aarhus Universities will use this to conduct studies of turbulence, radiation, and soot in the atmosphere.

“I don’t see my photography as emotional,” says Horvath, despite the beauty of her images. “I just try to show what’s happening.”

“I am fascinated by the work of scientists who dedicate their lives to delivering important climate data for humanity.”

See more from the photographers

Ami Vitale amivitale.com

Britta Jaschinski brittaphotography.com

Camille Seaman camilleseaman.com

Cristina Mittermeier cristinamittermeier.com

Daisy Gilardini daisygilardini.com

Esther Horvath estherhorvath.com

Taking Action

Charles Darwin Foundation

This international nonprofit provides scientific knowledge and research towards conserving the wildlife and environment of the Galápagos Islands. Founded in 1959, it works alongside the Galápagos National Parks Protectorate to safeguard the archipelago’s unique biodiversity, including endemic species such as the Galápagos tortoise and Galápagos penguin. Its achievements include creating the Galápagos Marine Reserve and leading the Isabela Project, which eradicated invasive pigs and goats on Isabela Island. darwinfoundation.org

Girls Who Click

This nonprofit based in the San Francisco Bay Area teaches nature photography to teen girls, empowering them to enter this male-dominated field and use their work towards conservation. Founder Suzi Eszterhas partners with professional photographers around the country to offer free workshops, plus an ambassador and mentorship program for young photographers and videographers. The ultimate goal is to inspire a new generation of female nature photographers and conservationists. girlswhoclick.org

Global Conservation

Jen Guyton jenguyton.com

Jo-Anne McArthur joannemcarthur.com

Morgan Heim morganheim.com

Suzi Eszterhas suzieszterhas.com

Tui De Roy tuideroy.com

This US-based NGO is focused on saving national parks and UNESCO World Heritage Sites in developing countries through direct funding of park protection systems. Working with conservation partners and supporters, it will bring its Global Park Defense program to 25 parks worldwide by 2025, enabling ‘No Cut, No Kill’ protection for the world’s last intact wild spaces, while also supporting the local and Indigenous communities who call them home. globalconservation.org

Her Wild Vision

This directory of top photographic talent aims to provide easier access to the work of women and women-identifying conservation photographers and filmmakers. Co-created by Morgan Heim and Jaymi Heimbuch, its worldwide database of over 1,400 individuals spans a rich diversity of expertise, issues, and specializations, enabling women to play a greater role in the field of conservation visual storytelling and helping to close the gender pay gap. herwildvision.com

A gentoo penguin vocalizing in Antarctica, photographed by Daisy Gilardini.

International League of Conservation Photographers

This global community of professional photographers and filmmakers uses visual imagery to shine a light on important conservation stories. Founded by Cristina Mittermeier in 2005, its 120 top-tier fellows work in 190 countries, ensuring a global impact. Collectively, their work illuminates everything from endangered species to climate change and ocean health, raising awareness of what is happening to this planet with the goal of achieving positive change.

conservationphotographers.org

Sea Legacy

This nonprofit provides visual content and conservation solutions to support the protection and rewilding of the ocean within our lifetimes. Co-founded by Cristina Mittermeier and a team of world-class filmmakers, conservationists, and photographers, it works as a global marketing, education, and communication agency for the ocean, instilling hope and moving audiences to action.

sealegacy.org

South Georgia Heritage Trust

This charitable trust works towards preserving the natural and historical heritage of the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia for future generations. The trust’s goals include redressing past damage to the island’s environment, protecting its indigenous wildlife, raising awareness of its threatened species, and preserving its rich human heritage. Its eradication of introduced invasive species such as rats, mice, and reindeer represents one of the world’s greatest habitat restoration successes. sght.org

Tikki Hywood Foundation

This wildlife-orientated nonprofit brings recognition, awareness, and conservation action to Africa’s lesser-known endangered species. Founded in Zimbabwe, with branches in Cameroon and Liberia, it works to rescue and rehabilitate small mammals such as the pangolin, on which it is a global authority, and engages with appropriate local authorities to reduce wildlife crime and promote the sustainable management of wild ecosystems.

tikkihywoodfoundation.org

Vital Impacts

This women-led nonprofit supports grassroots conservation through visual storytelling and the sale of fine art prints. Founded by Ami Vitale, it works with both established artists and emerging talent to support communities and organizations at the heart of conservation and humanitarian efforts worldwide. Projects include a year-long visual storytelling mentorship program for Indigenous conservationists working to protect endangered wildlife and threatened habitats in northern Kenya. vitalimpacts.org

We Animals Media

This media agency uses compelling photo- and video-journalism to bring visibility to animals trapped in the human environment. Founded by Jo-Anne McArthur in 2019, its global network of award-winning photographers and videographers document the hidden stories of animals in the food, fashion, entertainment, and experimentation industries. Its comprehensive collection is made available for free to anyone working to inspire compassion, conversation, and change. weanimalsmedia.org

Wildlife Center of the North Coast

This wildlife care hospital on the north Oregon coast rescues and rehabilitates injured, sick, and orphaned native wildlife. A nonprofit organization staffed largely by volunteers, it receives around 1,000 patients annually, providing professional medical care for everything from seabirds to raccoons. Many are victims of road traffic. The center’s broader mission is to promote compassion, empathy, and respect for all life, while promoting conservation and an understanding of ecology. coastwildlife.org

Women Photograph

This nonprofit works to promote a greater diversity of voices in photojournalism and supports photographers of all identities, especially women and non-binary photographers of color. It also offers project grants, mentorship programs and skillsbuilding workshops, and collects data on hiring and publishing statistics in the visual media industry. Its database, available to commissioning editors, includes more than 1,400 independent photographers based in over 100 countries. womenphotograph.com

Photography is not just about beautiful pictures. The 11 photographers featured in this book use their work to tell vital stories about conservation, society, and our environment. To make change happen, they also actively engage with—and even set up—conservation organizations, both local and global, among which are the following:

Afterword. And pictures.

Seeing the BigPicture

You have seen it all by now. But there’s one more thing—how this book came to be. Though you may have made connections between the photographers, there is one more connection that will help you see a bigger picture. And that is the BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition. All of the photographers featured in this book are part of our BigPicture community.

What is BigPicture? Ten years ago, as the alarming acceleration of change in the natural world coincided with humanity’s troubling disconnection from nature, the California Academy of Sciences realized that photography could help heal the rift. A global vision of the magnificent life on our planet might persuade people to stop and see what’s happening—and more than that, to care about it.

In 2014, we launched an international conservation photography competition, which has now become one of the most respected in the world. BigPicture showcases the amazing diversity of life on Earth—as well as the challenges it faces—and celebrates the photographers who dedicate their lives to shining a light on critical stories.

Now an annual competition, each year’s winners and finalists are showcased in an exhibition at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. The Academy (where I spend my days as Creative Director) is a renowned scientific and educational institution founded in 1853. Known for its magnificent museum featuring

The BigPicture 2022 exhibit featured Jo-Anne McArthur’s Grand Prize winning photograph of an eastern grey kangaroo after the 2020 Australian wildfires.

Winners of the 2017 Human/ Nature category included Jen Guyton’s photograph of wild meerkat research in the Kalahari Desert, South Africa and Ami Vitale’s ongoing panda project in Wolong, China

Ami Vitale’s winning Photo Story on the 2020 theme of Co-existence showcased the community at the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in Kenya.

Gayle Laird © California Academy of Sciences

Gayle Laird © California Academy of Sciences

Kat Whitney © California Academy of Sciences

a rainforest, aquarium, and planetarium, it presents programs and exhibitions like BigPicture to over a million visitors a year.

In every BigPicture exhibition, we profile each winning and finalist photographer, along with their photograph and story, combined with insights from our scientists. A few years ago we noticed a predominance of male photographers on show. Looking back at submissions, we saw this correlated with the much higher proportion of male entrants. This was representative of the field— prominent wildlife photography assignments, as in other areas of photography, are mostly awarded to male photographers.

Where were female photographers being acknowledged and celebrated? Was there a perspective not being seen? We wanted to address the gender imbalance and bias in recognition, so we began to look for ways to raise awareness of these issues.

Many of the most prominent female photographers in the world have been part of BigPicture—as winners, finalists, jurors, and presenters. Could we all come together to highlight the work and amplify the viewpoints of women by creating a book? The answer was a resounding yes! All the photographers generously agreed to participate and we were thrilled by their enthusiasm, support and breathtaking images. Photography judge Sophie Stafford and BigPicture photo editor Gayle Laird, helped curate a decade of images into visionary portfolios. Then, with the help of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Peg Tyre, we explored the unique perspectives that give power and purpose to the work of these pioneering photographers. This book is the result.

We should no longer be consumed by the idea of Having It All, instead, at this moment, let us be moved by Seeing It All.

—R honda Rubinstein, BigPicture Cofounder

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without BigPicture and the community that it brought together. From its what-if beginnings over lunch through its launch and beyond, Suzi Eszterhas has been integral to the competition, serving over the years as the unwavering jury chair. We are deeply grateful to her and the growing cadre of BigPicture judges who freely give their valuable time and deep expertise to ensure a best-in-class competition.

The winners of BigPicture are superbly displayed each year thanks to a beautiful exhibit designed by Sterling Larrimore and the Exhibits Studio team at the California Academy of Sciences. Since its inception, so many people at the Academy have helped to make BigPicture a success—too many to name here. But T.R. Malcom and the excellent team in Creative Studio have been indispensable in making everything happen. And special thanks goes to Melissa Felder who has been a constant supporter of all things BigPicture, including this book.

The book, Seeing It All, became possible in a conversation with Gordon Goff, who saw its importance and promptly agreed to publish it. Thank you Gordon, Jake, and everyone at Goff Publishing.

I am especially grateful for the very small team who created this hugely ambitious book: Thanks to Sophie Stafford, a gifted editor whose extensive knowledge of the conservation field imbued the book with added depth, and who put up with the ever-increasing scope with grace and humor. Thanks to Gayle Laird, who, on top of her duties as the Academy’s Senior Photographer, enthusiastically dove into the sea of images made available to us. And special thanks to writer Peg Tyre, who used her investigative-reporting skills to track down the photographers on assignment at the edges of the world and distill such revealing interviews.

I am extraordinarily grateful to the photographers who lent their time and images and wholeheartedly participated in the development of this book: Ami Vitale, Britta Jaschinski, Camille Seaman, Cristina Mittermeier, Daisy Gilardini, Esther Horvath, Jen Guyton, Jo-Anne McArthur, Morgan Heim, Suzi Eszterhas, and Tui De Roy.

I am honored that the esteemed Sylvia Earle (Time magazine’s first Hero for the Planet) took time out of saving the world to distill her insights about this moment and these photographs. I am so appreciative that Rebecca Solnit, who writes with such eloquence, readily agreed to contribute a thought-provoking essay. As did Indre Viskontas, an Academy Osher fellow, who dazzles us with her brilliance for BigPicture talks, events and especially her essay.

My inspiration may have begun with the classic volume, Family of Man, but nowadays it springs from the Family of Mine: my wonderful partner David Peters, who provided support and wisdom throughout this project, and our son Dash, who always sees the big picture. —R R

Chaired by Suzi Eszterhas, women jury members of past BigPicture competitions include Daisy Gilardini, Morgan Heim, Esther Horvath, Cristina Mittermeier, Camille Seaman, Tui De Roy, and Ami Vitale.

About this book

Seeing It All: Women Photographers Expose Our Planet

Authored by Rhonda Rubinstein © 2023 California Academy of Sciences

All photographs copyright © 2023 by the individual photographers

Contributing Editor: Sophie Stafford

Contributing Photo Editor: Gayle Laird

Editorial Consultant: Peg Tyre

Creative Advisor: David Peters

Book Designer: Rhonda Rubinstein

Managing Editor: Jake Anderson

Published by Goff Books

An Imprint of ORO Editions

Gordon Goff: Publisher www.goffbooks.com info@goffbooks.com

BigPicture is an initiative of the California Academy of Sciences. Find out more:

Back cover: Two polar bears visit the lunar landscape of an ice floe in the Central Arctic Ocean. Photographed by Esther Horvath: “No other place on the planet is like the Arctic Ocean. A land made of frozen water whose life on and beneath can only exist if the water stays frozen.”

This book was set in Whitney, Trade Gothic Next, and Bezzia.

The Whitney Family was originally developed for New York’s Whitney Museum by Tobias Frere-Jones.

Trade Gothic Next is based upon Jackson Burke’s original Trade Gothic family designed as a family of condensed sans serifs popularly used in handbills and circulars, known as “trade” work.

Bezzia was designed by Lettermatic (Riley Cran, Heather Cran, Danelle Cheney, Dave Bailey) and inspired by the handwritten labels attached to specimens in the Entomology Collections at the California Academy of Sciences.

In memory of Jinny Kim, one of the original, fabulous Ladies of BigPicture—her design exuberance lives on.

ISBN: 978-1-957183-30-5

Color Separations and Printing: ORO Group Inc.

Printed in China.

Goff Books makes a continuous effort to minimize the overall carbon footprint of its publications. As part of this goal, Goff Books, in association with Global ReLeaf, arranges to plant trees to replace those used in the manufacturing of the paper produced for its books. Global ReLeaf is an international campaign run by American Forests, one of the world’s oldest nonprofit conservation organizations. Global ReLeaf is American Forests’ education and action program that helps individuals, organizations, agencies, and corporations improve the local and global environment by planting and caring for trees.

This book is printed on 157gsm FSC-certified matte art paper using soy-based natural inks. The Forest Stewardship Council mission is to promote environmentally sound, socially beneficial, and economically prosperous management of the world’s forests. Our vision is that we can meet our current needs for forest products without compromising the health of the world’s forests for future generations. For more information, please visit https://us.fsc.org/en-us

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying of microfilming, recording, or otherwise (except that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publisher.

bigpicturecompetition.org calacademy.org

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.