JACKSON, WY (PNAN) – Making its debut at the National Museum of Wildlife Art and on view through Saturday, April 29, 2023, “Wolves: Photography by Ronan Donovan” is a traveling photography exhibition of the impactful work by this National Geographic Explorer and photographer Ronan Donovan. The exhibit features his stunning images and videos of wild wolves in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Ellesmere Island in the high Canadian Arctic.
Created by National Geographic Society and the National Museum of Wildlife Art, this exhibition also highlights the contrast between wolves that live in perceived competition with humans and wolves that live without human intervention. Donovan has examined the relationship between wild wolves and humans in order to better understand the animals, our shared history, and what drives the persistent human-wolf conflict.
“Wolves are such a fascinating animal to me because of how complex their relationship is with humans,” says Donovan. “Wolves were the first animals humans domesticated some 30,000 years ago and they have lived alongside us ever since as guardians, workers, and companions. Yet as humans moved to more sedentary lives, raising what amounts to easy prey in the form of livestock, wolves have found themselves in conflict with humans.”
As wolves in North America are increasingly under threat due to recent extreme wolf-control laws, and humans continue to impinge on the land and food sources that these animals need to survive, Donovan hopes that his photos will provide people with a better understanding of these often misunderstood animals. He also hopes they will see wolves as they are: powerful, intelligent, social mammals that have evolved to live in family structures similar to humans.
“The way that a culture views wolves can reveal a lot about how a society interacts with their environment. Is there a belief of power over animals, or is there a collective shared landscape?” says Donovan. “As a visual storyteller, my goal is to portray my subjects in their most authentic way by showing the challenges they face as well as the tender moments between family members in order to evoke a shared emotion that the viewer can connect with.”
For more information on this exhibition and other programming, see www.wildlifeart.org
