Exhibition: Wildlife Photographer of the Year
In the same week that the world discovered the best wildlife photographs of 2025, according to the Natural History Museum in London, I visited the exhibition of the previous year’s edition at the Catavento Museum in São Paulo. The competition Wildlife Photographer of the Year is the longest-running in its field and one of the oldest in the world, alongside the prestigious World Press Photo, whose São Paulo exhibition ended in September.
Bringing together 105 photographs selected in the competition’s 60th edition — submitted in 2023 and revealed to the public last year — the exhibition has been open in São Paulo since September 2 and will run until December 7. Despite its rather simple exhibition design, the works, approximately 90×60 cm in size, present the elite of wildlife photography, highlighting the stories, equipment used, the names behind the images, and the importance of these photographs for the conservation of biodiversity and endangered ecosystems.
A special highlight of this edition’s jury is the participation of Brazilian photographer Luciano Candisani, one of today’s leading visual documentarians, who won the competition in 2012 and was a finalist in 2017. Other renowned Brazilian photographers have also appeared among the finalists in previous years, such as Zig Koch (2013), Ary Bassous (2014), and Fernando Faciole (2025), though none of the photos featured in the São Paulo exhibition are by Brazilian authors.
In addition to Candisani, the jury chaired by editor Kathy Moran included two other men and four women, a commendable gesture by the Museum toward promoting diversity and gender parity. However, the profile of the selected photographers caught my attention during the exhibition. Indeed, photographers in the masculine sense (as my native language distinguishes gender) because of the 105 photos displayed, 97 were taken by men (considering that some series include multiple photos by the same author). Moreover, more than a quarter of the exhibited photographs were taken in former colonies such as Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Zambia, while only nine photographers come from any of those countries (one each from Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, and Sri Lanka, and five from India). On the opposite extreme, there are 18 American, 9 Canadian, 8 Australian, 3 Israeli, 2 Chinese, 2 Russian, and 53 European photographers. Even the few women selected all come from the global north.
Since the judging process is conducted anonymously and photo submission is free for competitors from most former colonies, another praiseworthy gesture by the Natural History Museum, these data observed during the exhibition expose the still very elitist nature of wildlife photography. It would be statistically improbable to have such a “male/white/northern” profile dominate the selection if there were truly diverse participation within the wildlife photography community.
It is important to make explicit that this is not a personal critique of the finalists as I don’t know any of them personally, and the photographs are of undeniably high quality, with many contributing directly to conservation efforts. Nor is it criticism of the jury, which faced the herculean task of evaluating nearly 60,000 photographs anonymously. The fact remains, however, that the exhibition reveals a select social group with the material means to dominate a significant segment of the photography market, and the causes of that are historical.
But understanding how the history of art has so far been dominated by an elite is also part of the path to overcoming that reality. International exhibitions such as this one offer an opportunity to anthropophagize — to absorb and reinterpret — the best of what comes from abroad. As Candisani noted, emphasizing the possibilities of digital photography, this “is a moment to experiment with new ways of interpreting” what lies before the lens, because even if far from ideal, never before in human history have lenses been in front of such diverse eyes, with interpretations that escape colonialist ideals of art.
Gender and geographic representation on juries are ways to encourage diversity, even if still in an initial stage. Other contemporary competitions, which surely face similar issues (though I haven’t checked), highlight women photographers, such as Ocean Photographer, or even include regional awards, like World Press Photo itself. Inspired by such examples, I hope the world’s longest-running wildlife photography competition enjoys an even longer, more inspiring life, revealing to the world more talents from historically marginalized social groups, and reflecting that diversity across the entire community, not just the judging panel. After all, science has already shown that ethnodiversity is essential for biological diversity conservation.
In the end, I can’t deny that the sociological study of wildlife photographers intrigued me as much as the photographs themselves. Now, the translated title of the exhibition takes on a new meaning (remember, my native language not only distinguishes gender, but also uses masculine as the “universal” gender). Yet, having the chance to appreciate the world’s top wildlife photography up close, noticing the details, is incomparable to merely seeing it on a screen. That alone makes the visit worthwhile. The stories told there offer a beautiful lesson in both photography and conservation and, when appreciated critically, they form an artistic and scientific collection of immeasurable value. I hope to visit all future exhibitions of this long-lived competition in person, and that the people from the photographed territories can, too.