Thomas Peschak - As a conservation photographer and storyteller my biggest wish has always been for

As a conservation photographer and storyteller my biggest wish has always been for someone to invent a time machine, so I can go back to before the dawn of the anthropocene and see with my own eyes now critically endangered species flourish and experience the rhythms of pristine ecosystems now just hanging on by a thread. In the absence of time machines, the next best thing for me has been to interrogate historical photographic archives looking for images that show readily identifiable locations and animal species 50, 100 or even 150 years ago. Historical photographs of this nature can be gold mines, especially when these scenes can be photographed again in the present day. They can make the invisible visible, clearly revealing the ravages that humans have caused over time. I have done this type of work successfully with seabird colonies, showing what the devastating loss of 230 million seabirds actually looks like. So when I recently photographed a story about glaciers disappearing due to climate change in the Swiss Alps for & I knew that I wanted to try to integrate the same technique into this story. Mine is of course not the first attempt of doing this in the context of glacier loss and my photographs are inspired and informed by the stellar work of pioneers like and Gary Brash. I nonetheless I felt like I could add another layer to this type of photography. First I decided to included the historical photograph in the frame, but most significantly I made the raw mountain elements, the winds that gust off what is left of the glacier my creative collaborators. I used a slow shutter speed and every time I held the historical photograph out at arms length, the wind blew it back in my direction, creating movement integrating the historical photograph seamlessly into the modern day scene, literally blurring the lines between past and present. Nikon made a great short film about my adventures and the challenges involved making this photograph. You can watch it by clicking on the link below my bio #nikonambassador #glacier #love #climatechange #photography #alps #switzerland #nikon #Z9
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