photo: © Marsel van Oosten – International Tiger Day—South Africa
This stunning tribute to Mother Earth reveals her beauty, diversity, and vulnerability across every continent. A beautiful and powerful book for anyone who loves landscapes, wildlife, and spectacular nature photography.
Photographer Marsel van Oosten is known for his masterful interplay of composition, lighting, color, and perspective. For him, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. In Mother, the internationally renowned photographer captures some of the greatest sights the natural world still has to offer.
On a world tour spanning every continent, Van Oosten photographs both wildlife and landscapes, turning his lens on meerkats and monkeys, birds and bears, the rugged canyons of North America, and the icy terrain inhabited by penguins.
These photographs are not only about beauty; they are also about urgency. We live at a time when more and more species are threatened with extinction and much of the natural world is disappearing—or has already been lost.
Some of these endangered species and vulnerable habitats are well known; others are not. With a foreword by evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein and an interview with Marsel van Oosten by journalist Aleena von Storms, Mother raises awareness of the scale of the environmental crisis.
Van Oosten will donate the proceeds from the book to the Canopy Project, a tree-planting initiative active around the world. Extreme deforestation and the destruction of entire ecosystems are major causes of species extinction. The more land is reforested, the greater the chance that animals will survive and even thrive again.
Marsel van Oosten was born in Rotterdam in 1967. He is the only photographer in the world to have won the so-called Grand Slam of nature photography: Wildlife Photographer of the Year, International Nature Photographer of the Year and Travel Photographer of the Year. His photographs have been shown in numerous galleries and museums. He lives in Knysna, South Africa, with producer and videographer Daniella Sibbing. The couple specializes in international nature photography and leads photography tours under the name Squiver.
The Tower, Botswana. I shot this photograph on a very windy morning when there was a lot of dust in the air, which can create very colorful sunrises and sunsets. This giraffe was annoyed by the red-billed oxpeckers that were harassing it. Every now and then it would violently shake its head, which made the birds fly off, only to return a few seconds later.
International Tiger Day, South Africa. Tigers are like humans — they all have different characters, and different behavior. Over the years, I have spent a lot of time with this particular female as she was not only very pretty, but also very relaxed. As a result, her cubs were also very relaxed almost from the moment they set foot outside their den for the first time.
Translation: © Fotografie.nl
Mother, A Tribute to Mother Earth – Marsel van Oosten
Pages: 320
Price: € 85,00
Publisher: teNeues
