10 August 2019 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I subscribe 0330 333 1113
‘I’ve had all the tropical diseases, I’ve had guns
to my head. I don’t know if I get scared...’
natural habitats disappearing,
it’s really crazy. The second
thing is the rate at which we are
introducing new animals to
diff erent places – they kill so
many native animals, it’s
beyond comprehension.
‘I travel a lot to islands, because
there are often endemic animals
that only live on a small, tiny island.
Once you introduce a cat, a monkey,
another lizard, a snake, or mice, rats
or pigs, then everything else is gone.’
It’s a relatively short period of
time in the grand scheme of things,
but Matthijs has witnessed the
extinction of many diff erent species
in the past 30 years. ‘When I look
at the books on my shelf – I have a
giant collection – I see frogs that
were common in the 1980s, so only
30 or 40 years ago, which are all
extinct now. So the big challenge is
to fi nd, or re-fi nd the animals. I’ve
got a lot of photos of animals that
have been rediscovered, so we
presume they are extinct, or
near extinction now.’
The other big challenge is to
overcome danger, which comes
from numerous sources. ‘A lot of
the countries I travel to are very
dangerous. I go to Central Africa
and East Africa – and they’re not
really tourist places. There’s South
America as well, so you end up in a
lot of dodgy places. Then you’ve got
the risk of the animals themselves
- a lot of them are adapted to
defend themselves, so they’re
poisonous or venomous, or they
have stings, spikes, or they bite you.
Then you’ve got the diseases as well - malaria, dengue fever and so on.’
Listening to Matthijs reeling off
these problems as if they were
minor inconveniences, I’m
compelled to ask if he ever gets
scared. The answer is pretty
laid-back. ‘Well, sometimes. I mean,
I’ve had everything. I’ve had all the
tropical diseases, I’ve had guns to
my head. I don’t know if I get scared - it’s more like a feeling that I’m
really alive. I’ve got a family, so I
want to stay alive, but it’s not that
I’m really “scared” as such.’ Well,
there we are then.
Finally, of course, there’s the
challenge of fi nding the animals
once he arrives at the destination.
As he points out, ‘It’s not like they’re
just sitting on the leaves waiting for
you to come by.’ Once he does fi nd
them, he has to try to get the look he
wants – and although clearly not
averse to putting himself through
all kinds of trials, he will never pose
the animal – even if that means not
getting the shot.Pure and simple
I’m most surprised to discover that
the images don’t go through much
processing. In fact, Matthijs doesn’t
even use Photoshop, but rather
Apple’s Aperture software that has
been discontinued for the past fi ve
years. ‘I photograph in raw, so I just
process them – I look to see if there’s
any strange dust or specks on them,
and that’s about it,’ he says.
After all this time, it felt like the
right moment to collect everything
together into a volume for the book
Cold Instinct. But it was important
that the book be created on his
own terms, with little or no
compromises. Matthijs had beenThe hairy bush
viper is found in
the Democratic
Republic of Congo