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Matinee: Tom Svensson Share This on LinkedIn   Share This on Google   Tweet This   Forward This

25 June 2016

Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?

So we're pleased to present the 141st in our series of Saturday matinees today: Tom Svensson.

This clip is just 3:43 minutes long but we took a good deal longer to get through it because we couldn't help pausing it to take in some of the more breath-taking images.

Swedish photographer Tom Svensson, a member of the Canon Explorers ambassadors program, is a conservation photographer by trade. Born in Denmark, he makes his home in a small fishing village on the west coast of Sweden.

Extinction happens fast, he warns, and he hopes his photographs prompt people to take protective action.

His cause is the protection of endangered species. And his images of these wild animals speak eloquently in their defense. Extinction happens fast, he warns, and he hopes his photographs prompt people to take protective action.

Every year, he says, 45,000 species go extinct. They are animals our children and grandchildren will never know, he adds as the video shows his photographs of a few of them.

It's intense work and when he needs "to be in a place where I can shut off" he returns to his fishing village, whose smooth rocky terrain is gorgeously captured throughout this video. It's not a resort, he admits, it's just magnificent.

He talks gear a little. His 70-200mm and 200-400mm lenses are his sidekicks, he says as he shuffles through large prints of his images.

But he doesn't dream about gear. He dreams about the animals. And hopes one day people will say, "In my grandfather's time, this is what it was like, these animals in cages, but it's not like that any more."

We tend to think of photographs stopping time, capturing a moment in the past. But for Svensson, they are not about the past. They argue for the future.


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