© Chen Elbaz,

Ha'aretz Magazine, Israel

"I came to photography by accident.  In grad school I decided do research on the ants of tropical Asia.  I wanted to stay in Asia for as long as possible -- a dozen countries in 29 months, as it turned out. Anticipating I would make extraordinary discoveries I decided my doctoral committee might wonder if I had been smoking exotic subtances with a guru unless I returned with solid documentation.  So I learned how to take photos using a book about supermodels.  I applied the idea of "fill light" and "hair light" to macrophotography -- the photography of the very small.  What can I say?  It worked.  With under $ 230 in camera gear, including flashes so cheap they frequently electrocuted me, my dissertation subject lead to my first published pictures, an article for National Geographic Magazine.”

Mark Moffett

"The ant photographs of Mark Moffett, a Harvard-trained ecologist, are often compared to art."

Alex Chadwick, NPR

Stock: Mark's images are available from Minden Pictures.  Turn up the sound and watch a sample slideshow of his images, right.

Exhibits:

An exhibit of Mark's photographs of frogs, described as “stunning” by the Washington Post, was on display at National Geographic Society Museum in Washington, D.C. through the spring of 2008.

An exhibit of Mark’s research and photographs on ants will open at the Smithsonian Institution in 2009.

Mark has an ongoing exhibit at University of California at Berkeley.

Recent Awards:

Five of Mark's images made the grade for the "100 Best Nature Pictures" special edition of National Geographic Magazine.

His work has travelled around the world as part of several Pictures of the Year Awards. In 2005 he received both the Best Picture and Best Story awards for a nature story on Brazil’s Atlantic Forest -- a feat meriting a news item in National Geographic Magazine.

2006 Mark took third place for Best Story  for National Geographic Magazine’s article on praying mantids around the world, including rare species never before photographed.

Philosophy:

Nature photography is often trapped in a decades-old obsession with technical perfection over content.  Sadly, this preoccupation with "calendar-style imagery" (most often studio photographs for insects) has been supported by choices made by many editors. In truth, people appreciate photography that shows an investigative sense of discovery, digging deep into a species' natural behavior and ecology, as with the best efforts of the National Geographic Magazine.  For more about nature photography as journalism see Magnificent Moments -- The World’s Great Wildlife Photographs (GH Harrison, editor).  Mark's text for this book is excerpted here, with the kind permission of Tom Petrie at Willow Creek Press.

Art Photography:

Fine art publisher Quantuck Lane Press will publish a book of his ant-eye-view images of Manhattan, where Mark investigates the notion of landscape with images of 300 of the city's landmarks.   "I treated this project like one of my jungle expeditions ...walking for miles each day and applying my biologist's eye to urban ecology," Mark says. The photography reveals an unexpected beauty to the processes of life, death, transformation and renewal that maintain urban health, but go largely unnoticed at our feet.

Music and Photography:

Mark is working with Joel Chadabe at Electronic Music Foundation
to create new forms of multimedia presentation involving images,  art, storytelling, and natural sound.  As a first step, on 17 October 2007 he narrated a concert of his images and Joel’s soundscapes at Judson Church in Manhattan for an international symposium that focused on natural sounds as music, Ear to the Earth.

Watch Mark’s  Slideshow