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Discovery: Photographer Snaps Stunning Portraits of Endangered Animals: Swimming
Polar Bears, Strange Saiga, Wet Tigers, and More
(Courtesy of Tim Flach)
Discovery


PHOTOGRAPHER SNAPS STUNNING PORTRAITS OF ENDANGERED ANIMALS: SWIMMING POLAR
BEARS, STRANGE SAIGA, WET TIGERS, AND MORE

BY Michael Wing TIMEJune 6, 2022 PRINT

British photographer Tim Flach trains his camera lens on some of the most
endangered animals on Earth.

Recollecting boyhood memories sketching outdoors, he attests to a bond he forged
with nature by spending time in her midst, literally feeling the energy of a bee
streaking through the sky as it passed in front of him while his pencil
scratched the page. This primal bond is what he seeks to serve the viewer
through his photography by employing a conscious anthropomorphism of nature —
attributing human traits to all manner of things that crawl, creep, swim, and
flutter in the wild world around us.

Dwindling species — such as the arresting, wide-eyed crowned lemur featured on
the cover of his book “Endangered” — are portrayed by Flach in ways we humans
can relate to, stirring new sympathy for these beautiful creations, a sympathy
needed for their very preservation. A thought-provoking 2001 study by Kalof,
Zammit-Lucia, and Kelly, notes Flach, explains that “placing animal
representations in a visual context that is usually associated with human
representation had the effect of enhancing feelings of kinship.”

A crowned lemur. (Courtesy of Tim Flach)

The said crowned lemur, curled up, arms wrapped round tucked legs, conspicuously
echoes a young human. “That body language evoked a sense of a child holding his
knees,” Flach told The Epoch Times, conjuring the scene of a school gathering on
the floor of a gymnasium.

While traditional wildlife photography like that in National Geographic creates
a sense of “otherness,” Flach seeks to bridge the gap between us and them to
instill a sense of “sameness.” Rather than just snapping what “one expects to
see” in a wildlife book — “the sort of animals that might be in a children’s
bedroom, the flamingo, the toucan,” Flach says — there’s room for the
unexpected, which divulges their all-important surrounding story.

“The richness of images is that they can have this slippage between different
possibilities … There was a picture of a tiger shaking its water. You remember
that?” he said, denoting a rather astonishing close-up of a soaking-wet Bengal
tiger shaking water off its fur — reminiscent “of your golden retriever,” alive
with undulating jowls and whiskers, swirling and spraying H2O and saliva in all
directions.

A wet Bengal tiger. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) A polar bear swimming. (Courtesy of
Tim Flach) Tim Flach shows off his Peruvian Inca tern photo. (Courtesy of Tim
Flach)

He shows a Peruvian Inca tern avian with an almost absurdly ridiculous
“handlebar mustache,” furthering the anthropomorphism by tapping into our
cultural consciousness of facial hair without diminishing the bird’s beauty.
Photographing polar bears can get “quite a cliché,” he added. But with their
eyes closed as if contemplating? underwater? That might echo how we see
ourselves pondering a problem. In a bathtub perhaps.

He reveals a portrait of a freakily outlandish-looking creature called a saiga,
photographed near the Caspian Sea in Russia, which have been poached for their
horns, a prized alternative to ivory. A kind of antelope, this strange and
wonderful beast features light fur, ribbed horns, and alien-like trunk-nose.
“They have this — we call it proboscis — nose, which does feed in very dusty
environments,” said Flach. “But they were hunted to last degree.” It’s
reminiscent of something out of the “Star Wars” cantina, as we humans readily
know from today’s pop culture world.

A saiga antelope in Russia. (Courtesy of Tim Flach)

Sadly, the saiga faces impacts from human interactions. “They’re so scared of
people because they’re chased on these motorbikes, and they literally run them
down,” Flach said. “They have heart attacks, and then they plug them, and so
when they hit any human activity, they’re really, really nervous.”

The photographer has journeyed to Kenya to look the very last male white
rhinoceros in the eye; to the Galapagos Islands to watch hammerhead sharks
gracefully circle above him; and to Mexico to gaze upward upon thousands of
monarch butterflies floating like golden confetti.

Though Flach plans excursions with a specific animal in mind, an element of
chance always enters the equation; it’s part of the creative process, he says.
Visiting Sichuan province, China, to photograph pandas outside Chengdu also
afforded him the chance to snap golden monkeys and red pandas. His foreknowledge
going in is not always what comes out. “I know I need a double-page spread,” he
said. “But what I need to do is see what reveals itself, so I go searching.”

He added, “The creative process is: you have to go to catch something, you have
to ‘go fishing.’ When you’re there, you have to be present, you have to observe
— truly look and see what reveals itself. When something reveals itself, that
surprises you, in turn, that will surprise other people. If you just do what you
could predict, often that’s less interesting.”

Close-up of a Yunnan snub-nosed monkey. (Courtesy of Tim Flach)

Alluding to challenges we humans currently face in finding harmony with mother
nature, he invokes a peculiar term: “the Anthropocene epoch,” meaning the age
where man is shaping the planet geographically rather than the fluxes of natural
forces doing so. Conversely, “the Holocene” is what led up to that, until about
the time of the Industrial Revolution.

For his book, Flach collaborated with leading conservationist Jonathan Bailey,
who helped illuminate the stories behind the pictures with his writing, and with
the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, which provided valuable resources to
illustrate in great detail how animal species are undergoing dangerous and fatal
declines.

Helping humans connect emotionally with creatures of the Earth, great and small,
the photographer hopes to touch the hearts and minds of those who decide policy
around the globe.

More photography by Tim Flach:

Close-up of a sea angel. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) A mother chimpanzee and her
baby. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) African elephants. (Courtesy of Tim Flach)
Scalloped hammerhead sharks circling. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) A pair of
ring-tailed lemurs. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) A black-and-white ruffed
lemur. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) A swarm of fireflies. (Courtesy of Tim Flach)
Forest light mushrooms. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) A hippopotamus. (Courtesy of Tim
Flach) Danum Valley Conservation Area in Sabah, Borneo. (Courtesy of Tim Flach)
A polar bear resting. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) An axolotl. (Courtesy of Tim
Flach) A ploughshare tortoise. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) Monarch
butterflies. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) A polar bear underwater. (Courtesy of Tim
Flach) A Philippine eagle. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) A shoebill. (Courtesy of Tim
Flach) Cheetahs. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) Several sea angels. (Courtesy of Tim
Flach) An Iberian lynx. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) A snow leopard. (Courtesy of Tim
Flach) Pangolins. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) Panda bears. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) A
baby panda with conservationists. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) A proboscis
monkey. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) A mandrill. (Courtesy of Tim Flach) Tim Flach
shows off a photo of Jacobian Pigeon. (Courtesy of Tim Flach)

Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get
your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Inspired newsletter at
TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter



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Michael Wing
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Michael Wing is a writer and editor based in Calgary, Canada, where he was born
and educated in the arts. He writes mainly on culture, human interest, and
trending news.

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