Bengal Tiger to Saiga Antelope: Two years of clicking threatened species
Primates coping with habitat loss, big cats losing the battle to human settlements, elephants being hunted for ivory, birds being taken captive — acclaimed photographer Tim Flach has spent the last 2.5 years travelling across the globe to document the lives of threatened species.
From forests to savannahs, polar seas to the great coral reefs — the 59-year-old from London has managed to construct a powerful visual record of animals and ecosystems facing harsh challenges, in a book titled Endangered.
In his quest, Flach travelled to Russia, Kenya, China, USA, Galápagos Islands, Philippines, Gabon, and Japan, among other countries. The book unfolds as a series of interconnected stories that pose moral dilemmas, expressed through more than 180 images.
How did Flach approach the animals, without scaring them away? “You have to be respectful while dealing with wild animals and I’m fortunate to have worked with people who knew the animals well,” Flach tells us in an e-mail interview. “I couldn’t approach these animals the way I would approach a horse or a dog, so time was spent observing them,” he added.
Flach’s biggest challenge, he says, was the Saiga Antelope. The photographer, who is also involved in animal protection and conservation, spent an entire summer in Russia’s Stepnoi National Park, Astrakhan pursuing the animal, in vain. Saigas are extremely shy creatures, so Flach would wait before sunrise, laying on the ground camouflaged. “I couldn’t understand why my 5DS was capturing blurred images. I realised much later that the heat from the ground distorted the light so much that the image produced was soft and warped,” he shares.
Flach returned to capture the critically endangered animal in another extreme temperature, - 35 degrees. The Saiga was just as elusive, but Flach managed to get a shot.
The Saiga is native to Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russian Federation, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. It is regionally extinct in China, Moldova, Poland, and Ukraine. Their global population is now estimated at approximately 50,000, down from 1,250,000 in the mid-1970s. Uncontrolled illegal hunting for horns (male horns are exported for the traditional Chinese medicine trade) and meat since the break-up of the former USSR has led to the catastrophic fall in numbers, according to International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The urgent theme running through Endangered is: ‘The future depends on the need for people to connect with nature.’
Flach has published three books so far — Equus, Dogs Gods, and More Than Human. All his works attempt at capturing animals in a typically ‘human way’. Flach says, “When it comes to representing animals, the images need to possess a sense of character, personality, and kinship. That way we are more likely to connect with them and act in a responsible way. This becomes all the more important in case of endangered species.”