Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Unforgettable Portraits

...and stay for the other fabulous portraits!I got to visit the Natural History Museum's exhibition gallery in May 2019, to see the winners of the "Wildlife Photographer of the Year" Exhibition 2018 - for which there is also a web page. Along with the "book of the exhibition" I bought the portraits volume (this one) and was struck by the beauty of just about everything in it. Being portraits there are fewer macacbre images, but although nature might be "red in tooth and claw" it's also really rather beautiful and at times artistic. What impressed me was the way in which the images brought out some other qualities of the creatures, fish with humped foreheads might sound grotesque, but when they are infinite pastel shades as well, they're suddenly beautiful after all. "Matriarch" - a close view of an elephant that goes out of frame in all directions to settle instead on the textures of the skin and the sense of quiet intelligence that elephants possess - is perfectly composed/cropped to become less of a picture of an elephant, and more of a character study. In Zimbabwe years ago I got to "meet" a few elephants, and shots like this one are pretty much the only way to really see who they are as individuals.And that's what this Portraits volume does. It sets animals alongside us as "people of the world" with faces both expressive and impassive, all in parallel lives being lived together as a greater complete system of which humans are presently a particularly uncooperative and heedless part. Seeing animal portraiture does in a sense bring forward character and a sense of who they actually are. "Troublemaker" (Sulawesi crested black macaque on p.112), with his asymmetric expression and direct engagement with the camera, really seems to deserve that name - he looks like trouble, or at least mischief. His island home behind him is neither especially beautiful or noteworthy, it's just where he lives (or lived, because he has now disappeared from the scene) and has a sense of being just that, home, not "a setting" for an image. The shot isn't about what he is, but who he is when he's at home.What I came to admire was that the creatures are very much parts of their environments and in some instances get an almost mystical aura about them, for example "The Golden Couple" (which you can see on the NHM website) could almost be a scene from an environmentally aware sci-fi movie - but is actually right here on the planet where we live.If you can see some of these images online at the Natural History Museum website, why would you need a book? The production of the images is as good in the book as anywhere else, the tome is lavish to the point where I occasionally wonder how it can be produced at such a reasonable price even given economies of scale! It's the classic old "coffee table book" format, just somewhat more compact, the descriptions are right there by the images. The book's a lot more impressive than a small screen, or a larger screen in perhaps a less comfortable part of the house! You can pick it up and be in its world in a moment.There are a few images that spread across between pages, but most sit by themselves with the exhibition text on the facing page. The book lies fairly flat when open, so having the central "gutter" through the image is less awful than you might otherwise imagine, and a lot of care has been taken to put the subjects of the pictures away from that gutter.The captions provide small insights into the situations surrounding the images, a fennec fox being turned into a pet for sale in Tunisia, held on a string leash between two feet in frayed slippers is equally uncomfortable to see, but the social context is explained and we get to learn that this is a social consequence of poverty, in which people have to exploit any way they can to make some kind of a living - and we have solutions to that should we choose to help. So there is gentle activism in there too. In all of the ways we use books and learning to educate our own children, this book would very easily provoke some insights to be talked through, on philosophy and ethics and all those abstract ideas where sometimes we struggle to find ourselves a really good example when explaining the world to our own young.It's a rare combination of beauty, insights, and a few thorny issues to occupy ourselves with should we have the inclination; it's educational but not at length, and activist but not to any extreme. It's an absolutely contemporary take on the original coffee table book and it does the photographers and subjects a great deal of credit.For the present price on Amazon, I can't think of a single reason not to buy this book, and if you wanted to buy at the Natural History Museum for a little more and support their work, it is still extremely reasonable for what I feel I got and will get from reading and gazing through it.

Lovely book, but why open with a portrait of a “trophy hunter”.A beautiful book to celebrate wild life should not open with a man surrounded by killed animals! Makes no sense.The other photos are beautiful, but I feel they should fill the entire pages.

This is a gift for a photographer friend I have no doubts she will be delighted with it. The book is value for money, it is hardback, it has a slipcover, the colour photographs are reproduced on first quality photographic paper which covers the price of the book many times over. I am 100% happy with my purchase.

Professional and artistic photographs so glad I chose this book as the pictures are so vivid and make you react, the photographers are incredible and talented.

Unforgettable portraits. What else is there to say?

Love this,good service bought as a gift

Few pics some very poor