138 DIGITAL CAMERA^ OCTOBER 2019 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com
also very important. That’s what I ended
up doing: telling the stories of women and
what it’s like for the people caught in the
middle of this ‘greater game’.Why did you shift away over the years
towards wildlife and conservation issues?
It was for deep ideological reasons. My work
now is just as risky. People see the cute animal
pictures, but human tensions and conflicts
are always there.
After I’d covered conflict after conflict,
I started to see that each one was connected
to the environment and nature. People look at
my pictures now, but they don’t understand
they’re not really pictures about wildlife and
animals. They’re stories about humanity.
We need to understand that we’re part of the
landscape, and we’re destroying it. If we don’t
understand our intricate connection, that weneed to start paying attention and creating
protections for these last wild places,
we’re in deep trouble.
That UN report [IPBES Global Assessment
Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
Summary, May 2019] came out; we’re going to
be witnessing a million species going extinct,
and it’s purely human-driven. When we start
taking keystone species and destroying our
environment, human beings are going to be
impacted. It has this massive ripple effect.
Right now is the moment to act, and not
enough people are actively engaged in the
future. I see the future unfolding in front of us
in slow motion and I think to myself, if all of us
don’t start using our voices and taking simple
actions, we’re condemning future generations,
and even our generation, to eternal poverty. It
doesn’t have to be that way. It doesn’t have to
involve all this suffering. That’s the reality.NEXT
MONTH
Stephen
WilkesAmi Vitale
“ They’re not really pictures about
wildlife and animals. They’re
ɀɎȒȸǣƺɀژƏƫȒɖɎǝɖȅƏȇǣɎɵٺ
Above: Relatives of Naz
Banu, killed during an
attack on leading
politician Sakina Yatoo,
mourn over her body
during her funeral in the
northern Kashmir town
of Mirhama. Saturday,
21 September, 2002.Ami^ VitalePanda Love: The Secret
Lives Of Pandas by
Ami Vitale is out now,
published by Hardie Grant.http://www.hardiegrant.com