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STEVE BLOOM & ALWYN COATES: WILDLIFE
For the past seventeen years, Steve Bloom has travelled to the remotest reaches of the world, capturing spectacular photographs of its wildlife. Born in South Africa in 1953, he first used his camera to document life in that country during the apartheid years. He moved to England in 1977, where he co-founded one of London’s leading photographic special-effects companies and worked on major advertising campaigns.
From the early nineties, Bloom returned to his love of photography and concentrated on building up a body of work that makes a powerful environmental statement by revealing sentience in animals and blurring the lines that separate different species. Deliberately anthropomorphic, with many pictures featuring eye contact, Steve Bloom’s work has an intimacy that highlights the common threads linking all living beings. These connections pervade all his work, and his lifelong love of South Africa, and its wildlife, has gained Bloom’s significant reputation as one of the UK’s top photographers.
His best-selling photography monographs have been published more than seventy editions worldwide. Titles include Untamed, Elephant, Spirit of the Wild, In Praise of Primates, Living Africa, and Trading Places: The Merchants of Nairobi. His outdoor giant exhibition installations, Spirit of the Wild, have been seen by an estimated ten million people in eleven European cities.
His work has been in many solo and group shows, including London’s Photographers’ Gallery, The National Portrait Gallery and Museum Folkwang. International awards for his work include The Power of Photography Award, The Golden Eye of Russia, and the Lucie Awards.
Steve Blooms exhibition at Lucy Bell Fine Art launches his limited-edition prints. Please call Lucy Bell on 01424 434828 for more information and images.
Limited Edition Black and White Prints
ALWYN COATES
SHEFFIELD-BORN photographer Alwyn Coates is more used to focusing on celebrity subjects including Jerry Hall, Val Kilmer, Matt Lucas and Jordan – but there is little doubt where his real passion lies.
Alwyn recently returned from Kenya where he captured the plight of many animals living through the country’s worst-ever drought and now he hopes his stunning – often haunting – images will raise awareness of the problems as part of his voluntary work with the Born Free Foundation.
The Amboseli Game Reserve in Kenya has not seen significant rainfall in more than three years as climate change has turned lush grasslands to desert.
The cost in animal terms has been great, with more than 50 elephants dying already this year – around 5 per cent of the area’s total population.
Alwyn said: “My first introduction to Amboseli was sitting in the Born Free Land-Rover in the middle of a dust storm. Visibility was zero. You couldn’t see the front of the car. Dust was seeping in through every crack, filling the interior, making breathing difficult. The four of us sat with our shirts up over our faces.
“What must it have been like for the animals outside you could only imagine.
“Locals I talked to said that the dust storms are more frequent these days but don’t last long and are actually the sign of rain coming.
“That evening back at the lodge I found myself looking out over the Amboseli desert with huge rain clouds overhead, thinking great, at last it’s going to rain. But the rain never came. This has been the story for three years.”
Alwyn’s Born free project is taking him all over the world photographing wildlife in Born Free supported charities and in the wild, He is working towards his first major solo exhibition.
Lucy Bell is showing six images in his collection as a special preview. with a small limited editions for sale.
50% Profit on each Print sale will be donated to the Born Free Foundation.
Also for sale especially for christmas is a limited edition selection of images signed by Born Free Foundation’s Virginia Mckenna, Who stared with her husband Bill Travers in the Movie Born Free.They then set up Born Free Foundation. Making these prints truly collectable. While helping the Born Free Foundation.