JOHN LIPKOWITZ BRAIDS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
JOHN LIPKOWITZ Interview by Harryet Candee
“Farther Reaches, Musings on a Wildlife Portfolio” is the title of your exhibition of photography the month of February at 510 Warren Street. How long have you been focused on this particular subject matter? John Lipkowitz: In 1997 when Nina and I still lived in Manhattan and she was a docent at The American Museum of Natural History we had an opportunity to travel with a group of Museum volunteers on safari to Kenya and Tanzania. In those days, I still had a Minolta automatic film camera which I bought in 1986 as soon as they were available in the US because visual issues made it difficult for me to focus accurately using a single lens reflex camera. The Minolta, which we had seen used by Japanese photographers while we were visiting China in 1985, seemed the answer to my often 6 • FEBRUARY 2019
THE ARTFUL MIND
out of focus images and I was still using it when we went to Africa. Exposure to the vast numbers and variety of free wildlife in East Africa (now reduced substantially by loss of habitat, poaching and human encroachment) was truly overwhelming. My telephoto mirror lens captured some amazing images, but left me looking towards even more serious equipment for the future. What has captured your interest the most out of all your adventures, and connections you have made with the animal kingdom and that of your adventures travelling? Lipkowitz: It’s really hard to pick a favorite, which often changes depending on where I am on any particular wildlife based trip. We have been fortunate that we have had the time,
money and health to do quite a bit of travel, often to wildlife destinations. I think that the area which has most fascinated me and captured my heart is the Arctic, that area around the top of the world above 66 2/3 latitude. The Arctic covers many countries, but the majority falls within Canadian and Russian territory. The US has some in Alaska and Norway has some in the Svalbard archipelago and I have been to various parts ten or eleven times. For me, the triple draw is the combination of near twenty-four hour daylight in the summer, massive volumes of ice, now steadily receding, but still plentiful, and polar bears, the Arctic’s defining wildlife species. Except for the light, the other elements continue receding these days. Nearly every day, we read more about sea ice melting causing shrink-
