Staff President, Marine Mammal Conservation Through the Arts
Bryant Austin is a marine mammal conservation activist and artist pioneering a
new approach and ethic in photographing whales. He founded the non-profit
Marine Mammal Conservation Through the Arts (MMCTA) to inspire, inform, and
empower an international audience to take action for the preservation of marine
mammals. To explore the full spectrum of whale behavior, MMCTA collaborates
with whale biologists in season-long research missions closely studying whale
populations.
Using novel techniques and the most advanced camera and printing technology
Austin works to produce high resolution archival images up to ten feet high by
ninety feet long. While the size of these images provides great detail of the
entire whale he is specifically drawn to their eyes. From a distance of just
six feet from the whales he explores the many expressions of their eyes and the
emotions they evoke in us.
When complete his images will be used to launch MMCTA’s international ``Whales
in Public Spaces'' campaign.
The intention of the WPS project is to make the beauty and reality of
whales concrete. In popular media we experience whales through small
photographs and brief video clips which fail to convey the existence of
whales in anything more than an infrequent, pale, and abstract way. The
WPS project will present the beauty, true size, and intelligence of
whales with an immediacy and sensorial reality to deliver powerful
psychological impact. The audience will have the ability to witness the
amazing size of the animal, yet see the detail of the animal’s body, in
particular the whale’s eye with its evident consciousness and emotion.
These life-sized compositions will be displayed internationally, in
high-traffic public spaces for optimal influence.
``Art has tremendous potential to affect the consciousness of our global
population. The impetus of my work is to help these animals and share them
with an audience who will never have an opportunity to be eye to eye with these
mysterious and awe inspiring creatures. The bulk of my work will ultimately
travel to public spaces internationally, specifically within whaling nations.
To fund portions of our work, I am releasing a very limited edition series of
several of my prints featured here.''
--Excerpt from Studio Cosmos