Arts Design

BEAUTIFUL BEASTS CAPTURED BEAUTIFULLY

by Joel Sartore. Golden Snub Nosed Monkeys from “Building the Ark.”

Here are some of the most beautiful photographs of Beautiful Beasts we’ve seen lately. We’ve all seen great photos of animals, but these are truly special. Not only are they astonishingly beautiful to look at and unusual in subject matter, but they each have underlying beautiful missions.

Photographer Joel Sartore has a passionate mission: to document the beauty of endangered species and landscapes. “It is folly to think that we can destroy one species and ecosystem after another and not affect humanity. When we save species, we’re actually saving ourselves,” says Sartore.

He began his love for Beautiful Beasts who face extinction as a child, when he learned about the very last passenger pigeon from one of his mother's Time-Life picture books.

Sartore photographed this addax, or white antelope, at the Gladys Porter Zoo.

Scientists estimate that only 300 wild White Antelope, or Addax, remain. Its population has plummeted due to hunting, drought, and even pressure from tourism. Once found widespread throughout regions of Africa, it is now found only in Niger.

Sartore photographed this six-week-old female western lowland gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo. For over 30 years, commercial hunting and outbreaks of the Ebola virus have been responsible for this gorilla species' plummeting numbers in its native Africa. (Watch a video of lowland gorillas.)

Sartore photographed this prowling Amur leopard, named Usi, at Nebraska's Omaha Zoo. The Amur leopard is a very rare subspecies of leopard found in the Primorye region of Russia. A 2007 census counted only 14 to 20 adults and 5 to 6 cubs. The Amur leopard is one of about 2,300 species that are considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Sartore is photographer, speaker, author, teacher, and a 20-year contributor to National Geographic magazine. He has written several books including RARE: Portraits of America’s Endangered Species, Photographing Your Family, and Nebraska: Under a Big Red Sky. His most recent book is Let’s Be Reasonable, a collection of essays from the CBS Sunday Morning show.

Sartore has also contributed to Audubon Magazine, Geo, Time, Life, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and numerous book projects. Sartore and his work have been the subjects of several national broadcasts including National Geographic’s Explorer, the NBC Nightly News, NPR’s Weekend Edition and an hour-long PBS documentary, At Close Range. And he is a contributor on the CBS Sunday Morning Show with Charles Osgood.

Check out Building the Ark, Sartore’s latest story about preserving endangered species in zoos, for National Geographic, which is now featured in a wonderful exhibition, The Power of Photography: National Geographic 125 Years, on display at the Annenberg Space for Photography (Los Angeles, CA), running now until April 27, 2014.

Arie van’t Riet is a Dutch physicist who specializes in radiation physics -- expecially in low-energy X-rays. He is also an artist who creates colored X-ray images of Beautiful Beasts and flowers. He calls them ‘Bioramas.’

The animals in these images had already died prior to photography, so no harm was done in creating these X-ray images. Riet uses silver bromide X-ray film, which acts as a black and white negative. He then digitizes, inverts, and colorizes parts of the image in Photoshop.

Riet’s colors and compositions are exquisite. They are both haunting and fascinating. And they are certainly a unique way to view Beautiful Beasts.

To see more of van’t Riet’s impressive work, head over to his website by clicking here.

Photographer Isa Leshko captured the deep beauty of aged Beautiful Beasts in a gorgeous series entitled “Elderly Animals.” These sepia toned images portray farm animals, before they were placed into sanctuaries, as well as beloved pets.

“It is very rare for a farm animal to actually live its full natural lifespan given that most of these animals experience brutality and death early in their lives,” says Leshko. “By depicting the beauty and dignity of these creatures in their later years, I want to encourage people to question and challenge the way farm animals are currently treated.”

Leshko’s work has appeared in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions. They have been published in The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, Photo District News and Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin.

Check out this short film was created by Walley Films about Isa’s Elderly Animals project.