Wildlife - Review

Animals, May, 1999 by Joni Praded

Wildlife. By Mitsuaki Iwago. 605 pages. Chronicle Books. $24.95 softcover.

What's it like to be a kangaroo with a gangly joey, arms and legs all akimbo, riding in your front pouch like a curious human infant bent on leaping from his carriage? Or how about a Laysan duck running through a swarm of flies with its beak agape to catch a bit of dinner? Or one wilde-beest in a frenzied, migrating throng hoping to avoid the Nile crocodiles stationed at a river crossing?

Mitsuaki Iwago and his camera want to know. And to explore the lives of these and other animals, they travel the globe, stopping in wildlife meccas to record animals' rituals with grace, an exquisite eye, and an uncanny ability to deliver a sense of place and awe in almost every shot.

Iwago, an internationally renowned wildlife photographer, has now assembled more than 450 images in a stunning collection, Wildlife. The book guides us through the Pacific Ocean and on to the far reaches of the Americas, Africa, Antarctica, Asia, and Australia.

Fittingly, Wildlife begins its journey in the Galapagos Islands. It was here--in this land of glowing volcanic rock, giant tortoises, and seafaring iguanas--that Iwago discovered his passion for nature photography. The son of a wildlife photographer, Iwago often accompanied his father on photo excursions around his native Japan. They recorded flying squirrels in Shikoku, foxes in Kyushu, bats in Iwate, and monkeys in Nagano. But the young Iwago had his sights set on other pursuits.

"I grew up watching The Lucy Show and listening to the Beatles," he writes. "Inspired by the LIFE magazines and photography books on the shelves of our living room, I dreamed of becoming a fashion photographer."

Then, in 1970, when Iwago was a sophomore in college, his father took him to the Galapagos; the islands worked their magic on Iwago. On his way home he stopped in Los Angeles. "It had long been the city of my dreams," he explains, "but I found it had lost its impact in the sea spray of the Galapagos."

Iwago the wildlife photographer was born, and over the years he has distinguished himself as one who, in trying to capture the true feeling of a place and the true nature of the animals that live there, often makes reality look magical.

The images in Wildlife are no exception. Captured in the strange light of the rainy season--when dense, low clouds cover the African plains--giraffes crossing from water to woods look haunting. You can feel the cold and strife in an image of penguins hunkered into the snow during a violent blizzard. Some images convey joy, others solitude; but all convey what Iwago has called okite, or the natural order of things--something he says he tries to embody in every photograph.

The culmination of a life's work, this is one collection wildlife enthusiasts should not miss.

Joni Praded is editor of Animals.