JOEL SARTORE
DOCUMENTING THE WORLD’S DISAPPEARING SPECIES
OVER THE LAST 13 years, Joel Sartore, a photographer for National Geographic, has made images of 10,000 of the roughly 15,000 species living in zoos and nature preserves around the world. But these are no ordinary photos. For each animal, he uses a mobile studio setup, capturing them on a white or black background. This is done to level the playing field, as he says, in terms of size. “The mouse is every bit as important as an elephant,” says Sartore.
The massive effort is part of his Photo Ark project, what will ultimately be a 25-year odyssey to photograph every species living in human care, documenting the world’s biodiversity before it disappears. “It’s important for people to understand that as these animals go away, so will we,” says Sartore, who estimates that 50 percent of the creatures he shoots are on the brink of extinction. “This is the last chance they have to be heard before they go out of existence.”
He has now traveled to 50 countries and shot everything from a critically endangered black rhinoceros to a clouded leopard to the black and white spitting cobra. “You have to wear a face shield, so you don’t get venom spit into your eyes,” he says.
Because the animals were often born in captivity and cared for by humans, they are generally cooperative. “Chimps are the hardest, by far,” Sartore says. “I still don’t have a good picture of adult chimps, really. They’re smart, they’re fast, they’re strong, and they’re not afraid of anything.” Another challenge: giant manta rays. “I haven’t figured them out yet, but I’ve got plenty of stuff to do in the meantime,” he says.
With changes to the Endangered Species Act in August, which included weakening protections under the pretense of lifting regulatory burdens, Sartore’s work feels more urgent than ever.
“You can’t doom half of all biodiversity to extinction and not think that it will affect humanity,” he says.