Photographer puts focus on worlds within worlds
David Liittschwager first started taking close-ups of small patches of ground to simplify his understanding of the world. The result was far from simple. He found worlds within worlds.
Photographs from this work, looking a biodiversity, can be found in his latest book ‘A World in One Cubic Foot’.
Mr Liittschwager will giving a lecture today at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute (BUEI).
He is a contributing photographer to National Geographic, and other magazines, and is in Bermuda collaborating with the LookBermuda team, led by Jean-Pierre Rouja, on their Nonsuch Island project. He will be showing some of his Nonsuch work during the lecture.
“Looking at things by one cubic foot is about slowing down and taking the time and seeing what you can find in one spot,” he said. “None of it takes place in Bermuda, yet. In the book are photographs of biological surveys, essentially of a square foot in Cape Town, South Africa, a square foot in a cloud forest in Costa Rica, a square foot in Tennessee and so on.”
He wanted to find out how much life you could find in a small place, and was staggered by the result.
“The surprise was that even in a small place there is so much that it can be a bit overwhelming, but overwhelming in a good way,” he said.
He is the recipient of an Endangered Species Coalition Champion Award for Education and Outreach, a Bay and Paul Foundation Biodiversity Leadership Award and the Thomson Reuters/Zoological Record Award for Communicating Zoology. Mr Liittschwager lectures and shows his work in both fine art and natural history contexts. His photographs have been exhibited at many museums.
Mr Liittschwager was honoured with a 2008 World Press Photo Award for his article on marine micro fauna, which appeared in the November 2007 issue of National Geographic magazine.
He is also a successful book author and has produced the books ‘Skulls’ and ‘X-Ray Ichthyology: The Structure of Fishes’. In collaboration with Susan Middleton, he also wrote A’rchipelago’, ‘Remains of a Rainbow’, ‘Witness’, and ‘Here Today’.
The lecture will be at the BUEI at 7.30pm. Members are $20 and non-members are $25. Tickets are available by calling 294-0204 or visiting Oceans Gift Shop.
Ticket holders are entitled to 20 percent off dinner at the Harbourfront before or after the lecture. Call 295-4207 for reservations and mention the lecture.
