Tag Archives: Wildlife

Nature & Technology: “Ode To Desolation” On Fire Lookouts In North America By Lindsey Hagen

Directed by: Lindsey Hagen

Filmed and Edited by: Chris Naum
Original Score and Mix by: Brandon Hagen
Original Artwork by: Jim Henterly

“Ode to Desolation” shares the story of Jim Henterly, a naturalist, illustrator and fire lookout as he contemplates the dwindling days of Fire Lookouts in North America.

With the influence of technology and AI threatening to make his role obsolete, we look into the future and ask ourselves what connections we will maintain to keep our human interpretation of the natural world alive.

New Wildlife Videos: “The Drill – Among Rarest Primates In The World”

Roughly 20 miles off the coast of West Africa, the island of Bioko sits alone in the Atlantic Ocean. This rainforest-dominated terrain is home to one of the rarest primates in the world: the drill.
From the Show: Monkeys of Bioko https://bitly.com/2DlbNX9

New Wildlife Books: “A Lifetime in Galápagos” By Tui De Roy (Princeton)

Featuring hundreds of breathtaking color photos, this stunning book guides you into labyrinthine mangroves to observe nesting herons, to misty cloud forests to glimpse flycatchers and orchids, high onto erupting volcanoes, and into the ocean to swim with hammerhead sharks. 

A beautifully illustrated and deeply personal chronicle of De Roy’s lifelong connection with these spectacular islands

A Lifetime In Galapagos - Tui De Roy - Princeton Press - July 20 2020Tui De Roy was a year old in 1955 when her family left Europe, boarding a banana boat bound for the Pacific to lead a different sort of life in Galápagos, one of self-sufficiency and living close to nature. She grew up on the islands and returned to them often over the next five decades. Discovering photography at a young age, she has dedicated her life to recording the islands’ natural history in infinite detail. A Lifetime in Galápagos is De Roy’s intimate portrait of one of the most spectacular places on Earth, presenting the wildlife and natural wonders of Galápagos as you have never seen them before.

De Roy’s lens provides up-close encounters with orca and sperm whales, colonies of iguanas, and the giant tortoises of Alcedo Volcano. She paints unforgettable portraits of her childhood in Galápagos―the islands at night under the stars of the Milky Way, sea lions at play and on the hunt, the diverse birdlife of Galápagos, and much more.

Blending striking images with vivid prose, A Lifetime in Galápagos also discusses the threats that global warming and other environmental challenges pose to the archipelago’s unique wildlife and fragile habitats.

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New Literary Podcasts: “Consider The Lemur” By Katherine Rundell (LRB)

Consider The Lemur - Katherine Rundell

It is​ probably best not to take advice direct and unfiltered from the animal kingdom – but lemurs are, I think, an exception. They live in matriarchal troops, with an alpha female at their head. 

LRB PodcastThe first lemur I ever met was a female, and she tried to bite me, which was fair, because I was trying to touch her, and humans have done nothing to recommend themselves to lemurs. She was an indri lemur, living in a wildlife sanctuary outside Antananarivo; she had an infant, which was riding not on her front, like a baby monkey, but on her back, like a miniature Lester Piggott. She had wide yellow eyes. William Burroughs, in his lemur-centric eco-surrealist novella Ghost of Chance, described the eyes of a lemur as ‘changing colour with shifts of the light: obsidian, emerald, ruby, opal, amethyst, diamond’. The stare of this indri resembled that of a young man at a nightclub who urgently wishes to tell you about his belief system, but her fur was the softest thing I have ever touched. I was a child, and the indri, which is the largest extant species of lemur, came up to my ribs when standing on her hind legs. She looked, as lemurs do, like a cross between a monkey, a cat, a rat and a human.

Nature & Adventure Videos: “Earth – Tomes” By Rhett Cutrell (2020)

Filmed and Directed by: Rhett Cutrell (ForNever Productions)

Fornever Productions specializes in telling the difficult stories in, and about, the natural world we inhabit but our 2020 Demo Reel is inspired by the stories Earth tells US. Earth: tomes. features a collection of our favorite moments over the past few years that were captured in the highest cinematic quality imaginable. We are very proud of our past work and are excited for what the future holds in the way of Outdoor Cinema

Website

World’s Top Painters: Bird Artist Vanessa Foley – “Sacred, Stylistic Beauty”

Vanessa Foley - Bird ArtistVanessa Foley is a professional bird artist based in the North of England. She regularly shows her work in notable galleries in the UK and America, has work in private collections worldwide and is a member of The VACVVM, an international cult of illustration co-founded by Aaron Horkey & Mitch Putnam.

VANESSA FOLEY - TOWARD A SECRET SKY

Vanessa Foley - Bird ArtistAn artist from Newcastle, England she is known for her intensely detailed graphite drawings and emotionally rich oil paintings. She has become a long-standing member of the Antler Gallery roster since we first exhibited her work four years ago.

Vanessa has embraced the stylistic beauty that oil painting offers an artist representing subjects accurately. The density and delicacy of the feathers in her paintings of birds of prey is stunning. In this series she has chosen to focus on the nocturnal, incorporating owls and moths. (Antler Gallery).

Website

 

New Art Books: “Walton Ford – Pancha Tantra”

walton_ford_update_2020_fp_int_3d_43453_2001151040_id_1294265In this stunning but sinister visual universe, beasts and birds are not mere aesthetic objects but dynamic actors in allegorical struggles: a wild turkey crushes a small parrot in its claw; a troupe of monkeys wreaks havoc on a formal dinner table; an American buffalo is surrounded by bloodied white wolves. In dazzling watercolor, the images impress as much for their impeccable realism as they do for their complex narratives.

At first glance, Walton Ford’s large-scale, highly detailed watercolors of animals recall the prints of 19th-century illustrators John James Audubon and Edward Lear. A closer look reveals a complex and disturbingly anthropomorphic universe, full of symbols, sly jokes, and allusions to the ‘operatic’ quality of traditional natural history.

Walton Ford - Pancha Tantra - Taschen

First available as a signed and limited volume, this updated edition of Pancha Tantra is the most comprehensive survey of Ford’s oeuvre to date, with 40 new works, more than 120 additional pages, and a new essay by the artist. It features dazzling details, an in-depth exploration of his visual universe, a complete biography, and excerpts from his textual inspirations: from Indian folktales and the letters of Benjamin Franklin to the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini and Audubon’s  Ornithological Biography.

Also available in an Art Edition limited to 100 copies, each with a print signed by Walton Ford

The artist

Walton Ford, born 1960, studied filmmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design, but soon realized he was a painter. For the last 20 years he has been creating large-scale narrative watercolors. His work has been widely exhibited, including solo shows at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

The author

Bill Buford is an author and New Yorker staff writer, as well as the founding editor of Granta, which he edited for 16 years. His books include Among the Thugs and Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as a Kitchen Slave. He lives in New York City with his wife and two sons.

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Photography Exhibitions: “Virtual Encounters – The World Of David Yarrow”

David Yarrow Virtual Encounters

CLICK HERE TO VIEW EXHIBITION

David Yarrow Virtual Encounters

David Yarrow is a British fine-art photographer, conservationist and author. He has travelled to isolated locations to capture images of wildlife, indigenous communities and landscapes. He currently lives in London.