This month it’s that time again. The winning photos of ‘The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition’ are on display again in the Museon in The Hague.

The competition is highly regarded, the most prominent nature photographers participate. The winners are mainly professionals, but amateurs also regularly win prizes. There is also a special competition for young people up to and including 17 years. The number of entries has stagnated for several years at over 40,000 entries from more than 90 countries, all of which were judged by an international jury of photo experts.

Not an art form

The fact that nature photography is popular does not elevate it to art. This is once again evident during a visit to the birthplace of this exhibition: the prestigious Natural History Museum in London, in the company of Renate Boere and Kimmy Spreeuwenberg; two fellow lecturers from the Willem de Kooning Academy.

Critical look

It is important to know that Kimmy and Renate are not nature photographers, but graphic designers with a great passion for visual arts, design and modern culture. They are therefore not substantively concerned with plants, animals or landscapes, but view the photos purely with a professional, visual eye. That makes their judgment unbiased, critical and instructive. Is the image shown exciting? Does it stimulate or surprise? How freely have ideas and forms been handled? They find these to be essential questions when viewing the photos. Much more important than: What does it represent? Do I find it beautiful? Or: Is it cleverly crafted?

Huge popularity

The first thing my colleagues noticed was the enormous popularity of the exhibition. The public interest is so great that – probably due to fire safety – only a handful of visitors are allowed in every fifteen minutes. When we bought our tickets (at £12.60 each) at 4:00 PM, the cashier said we would be lucky if we could get a time slot before 5:00 PM. Although it is no punishment to enjoy yourself for an hour in the impressive museum, we were still relieved that we were allowed to enter the dark exhibition space at the agreed time.

Clean

The way in which the photos are exhibited immediately arouses their surprise. The photos are exhibited there as a kind of window through which light shines from behind. I think I can detect a slight disappointment on the faces of Renate and Kimmy. In art, the way in which a photo is reproduced and presented is considered an essential part of the work itself. Artists often experiment with the imperfections and side effects that arise during printing. Kimmy: “It is understandable that a purely functional, technically optimized solution was chosen here, but it really takes some getting used to.” They think that the exhibition as a whole therefore appears very clean and that nature photographers thereby deny themselves much room for individuality and originality.

Well done

Strolling through the crowd, past the walls on which the various categories of photos are hung, there are only a few moments at most when my colleagues are so fascinated that they stop moving. Not that the quality of the photos is lacking. On the contrary, they are impressed by the technical quality and the often perfected compositions. But they classify all of that in the category of “well-done-but-quickly-bored-of”. They find the photo of a monkey holding an iPhone in its hands that won the audience award to be conceptually rather flat. The overall winner, a black-and-white shot of a group of lions seen diagonally from above on a rocky plateau with a lot of sky above, also makes little impression. “Perhaps interesting as a subject, but nothing special as an image.”http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/wpy/gallery/2014/images/black-and-white/4873/the-last-great-picture.html

Ikea kitsch

Aesthetics for aesthetics’ sake is out of the question, because it tends towards kitsch. The winner in the category Amphibians and Reptiles, a green snake on a green background, must therefore pay the price. “Purely decorative; could go straight from Ikea, this is too bad!”, my colleagues shout in unison.

Or the photo Edge of Creation, where a glowing stream of lava meets the cold sea. Kimmy: “A typical exaggerated image that you saw on those posters in the seventies.”

What is appreciated are shots that are a little less perfected. Photos with a raw edge, so to speak. An example: the passing school of mobula rays by Pedro Carillo (Spain). “The subject surprises with its graphic effect and it is at least not so slickly captured,” says Renate. “You seem to see a film grain. That bit of noise makes it extra credible as a photo.”

The portrait of the Chinese giant salamander, whose head is surrounded by a string of eggs, also does well. Especially because of the contrast between the alien-looking eggs and the somewhat dirty brown tones of the salamander’s head and the streambed below.

Autumn colours

Can it also be beautiful? They certainly think so, as long as the goal goes beyond pleasing the viewer. There has to be more to it; a photo is preferably somewhat cryptic and must at least contain a double layer of meaning, so that the viewer is at least briefly misled. A good example? The birch in autumn colours by the Austrian Herfried Marek. An image that deserves a large format thanks to its wealth of detail. The first impression is a pleasant collage of countless birch leaves in autumn colours. Neatly separated from each other by a delicate rime of frost. But if you look a little longer, you will see that in that same image there is also a thick tree trunk and some large branches.

Almost camp

The photo of the two floating jellyfish also stands out in a positive way for my colleagues. Not because of the aesthetics nor because of the high technical requirements to achieve beautiful underwater shots. It is the inimitable humor and alienation that speaks from the image, thanks to the bizarre combination of jellyfish, erotic shapes, skin tones and the reflection of a castle. “Almost Camp”, is the verdict.

Finally, we end up in the corner where the portfolio of the birds of paradise of National Geographic photographer Tim Laman is displayed. Hanging in the crowns of New Guinean forest giants, Laman has been busy revealing the hidden beauty of this bird family to the viewer for years. An honorable placement in this exhibition was almost inevitable. Curious which of the six works on display managed to convince my colleagues visually? “None,” is the unforgiving verdict. “The photographer has captured it all too clearly. Again, well done, but everything has already been filled in so there is little left to the imagination.”

Four Dutch photographers won prizes this year. Paul Klaver with images from the film De Nieuwe Wildernis in the new category TimeLapse. Furthermore, Marsel van Oosten, Jasper Doest and Jan van der Greef were among the winners.

Bart Siebelink