“What I’m doing is not about photography; it’s about changing the world. I use photography as a tool to make a difference.”
Photographers Against Wildlife Crime was published in 2018, and the idea was simple. Award winning photographers from around the world donated one of their images they thought best exposed the illegal wildlife trade, from critically endangered pangolins trapped for the alleged medicinal properties of their scales to baby chimpanzees trapped and caged for voyeurs’ entertainment. The accompanying captions were bold and brassy, large splashes of white an black block lettering set against a blood red backdrop, in bold, hard-to-miss fonts and short, pithy exhortations like “Dare to Know,” “Hunting on Thin Ice,” and “Blood Ivory”
A Guardian photo essay, titled “Photographers against wildlife crime — in pictures,” featuring images from the then soon-to-be-printed book Photographers Against Wildlife Crime, was printed on Oct, 16, 2017, as part of the Guardian’s newly stated aim to raise awareness about the climate emergency, species extinction, and growing environmental degradation and destruction.
The Guardian photo essay was modified on March 26 of this year — and if you’re wondering why, two years later, Photographers Against Wildlife Crime would be back in the news cycle, well, therein lies a tale.
The past few weeks has marked the publishing of a new edition — an edition printed entirely in Chinese. (An earlier, second edition featured the captions in both English and Chinese, but the new version is directed exclusively and entirely to Chinese-language readers.)
While it’s only a matter of time before any conversation about the illegal wildlife trade — or coronavirus pandemics, for that matter, that originate in so-called “wet markets,” where wild animals are caged, killed and then butchered onsite for human consumption — turns to China.
A Chinese-language edition of Photographers Against Wildlife Crime is not part of the international blame game, though.
It’s information, an eye-opener, with a simple message: This is what the illegal wildlife trade looks like, at ground level. This is what it is, warts and all. It is ugly and cruel and heartbreaking, and it stands against every ideal we humans hold dear about decency, morality and empathy toward all living things. Yes, Homo sapiens is the dominant species on the planet, but with that comes a special responsibility.
Consider: Tens of millions of sharks die each year, victims of fishing by-catch, and to satisfy the demand for shark fin soup.
Another image showed 4,000 pangolins defrosting after their seizure from hidden inside a shipping container at a port in Sumatra, Indonesia.
Another image showed endangered ring-tailed lemurs crammed into a tiny cage at Whenzou Zoo, in Zhejiang, China. Conservationists say there may be as few as 2,000 lemurs remaining in the wild, due to habitat loss, poaching and hunting.
These are just a few examples.
Photographers Against Wildlife Crime co-editor Britta Jaschinski, a conservation photographer in her own right whose credits include Vanity Fair, included one of her own images, of a captive circus orangutang stepping from its cage into the limelight, dressed in a costume to accompany a clown, at Chimelong International Circus in Guangzhou, China. The orangutang is forced to go through the humiliating routine three times a day.
So what, a cynic might say. The sad truth, though, is that Borneo orangutans are critically endangered. Even if capturing them and parading them in costume for circus acts were morally palatable, which it isn’t, when critically endangered species are captured from the wild for the illegal pet trade, it doesn’t bode well for the species’ long-term survival, let alone biodiversity or the health of the ecosystem at large.
Audiences are often unaware of the level of cruelty these animals face – the brutal training, the neglect and abuse.
Photographers Against Wildlife Crime was in part an attempt to redress that balance. These images are hard to ignore.
Jaschinski, who produced the book together with longtime journalist Keith Wilson, who wrote the text, said via email that an exclusively Chinese-language edition only made sense. She’s justifiably proud of the bilingual edition, but a uniquely Chinese-language version is unique unto itself, and crucial if Photographers Against Wildlife Crime is to reach readers with a key role to play in ending the illegal wildlife trade.
“Our Chinese publisher liked our books,” Jaschinski explained, “but (they) wanted to create something specific for Chinese readers, and I just trusted that they know best.”
Jaschinski and Wilson put a lot of effort into Photographers Against Wildlife Crime but, even so, they were surprised at the positive reaction to the original edition. They knew it would be a tough sell. Deep down, they could be forgiven for fearing it would be an impossible sell, because of its sad and hard-to-take subject matter. In difficult times, people are looking for escapism, not more reason to feel depressed.
In fact, the opposite happened.
“Our first edition was a huge success, and we obviously wanted to draw attention to the subject in China. Honestly, Keith and me and most photographers and contributors are surprised that “our book made China look.”
The original, English-language book sold out in just a few months, and quickly became unavailable.
The second, dual-language edition served a double purpose, then, by reaching out to Chinese-language readers but also those English-language readers who missed out on the original.
“We still promote our second edition to all people who have an interest in protecting wildlife,” Jaschinski said. “It really is a ground-breaking book, if I may say so myself.”
Despite the litany of bad news in the headlines, Jaschinski remains optimistic about the future.
“I have to be, otherwise I would not be able to create these books. The positive attention we received, and especially the response in China, gives me hope that we are heading in the right direction.”
Generation Greta has a huge role to play, and is already playing it to the hilt.
“If that generation can walk their talk and together we can change laws, we can just about turn things around. The planet is in bad shape, and if we don’t move fast to reverse our consumption, we are doomed. COVID-19 is a wake-up call. If we don’t change the next virus will be in-the-making, and the next pandemic could be even worse. These viruses are created by us. But people dig their heads in the sand, because it is too difficult to comprehend and too uncomfortable to deal with. If we ignore it, it will bite us in the ass. It could wipe out (all) humans. Some may say that’s a good thing” . . . but.
The world is moving at such a fast pace now that we need powerful photography to give us pause, even if only for a moment.
A picture can change the world, as we’ve seen in the past. There’s no reason to think it might not do so again.
