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Wade Davis: Photographs
Inspired by artists such as Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz and Henri Cartier-Bresson, who wrote that great photographs come about in the decisive moment when the head, heart and eye find perfect alignment in an axis of the spirit, celebrated anthropologist and photographer Wade Davis has travelled the world in pursuit of the wonder of the human imagination as brought into being by culture.
In Wade Davis: Photographs, Davis selects 150 of his favourite photographs from the thousands he has taken in the course of his forty-year career. Intimate portraits of family and community life, they are universal in feel, although they represent an enormous diversity of geographical locations and cultural backgrounds. Each one captures a rich story about the human condition, and invites the viewer to experience scenes of family, magic, love and tradition.
Throughout his career, Davis's central aim has been to convey a visceral sense of the mystery and wealth of human culture, the embodiment of all that we are and all that we have created as a species. Through his words and photographs, he sheds light on the great peril that many traditions face, and the danger of losing forever the rich cultural heritages that have sustained us for thousands of years.
In Wade Davis: Photographs, Davis selects 150 of his favourite photographs from the thousands he has taken in the course of his forty-year career. Intimate portraits of family and community life, they are universal in feel, although they represent an enormous diversity of geographical locations and cultural backgrounds. Each one captures a rich story about the human condition, and invites the viewer to experience scenes of family, magic, love and tradition.
Throughout his career, Davis's central aim has been to convey a visceral sense of the mystery and wealth of human culture, the embodiment of all that we are and all that we have created as a species. Through his words and photographs, he sheds light on the great peril that many traditions face, and the danger of losing forever the rich cultural heritages that have sustained us for thousands of years.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2016
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85 people want to read
About the author
Wade Davis
85 books832 followersEdmund Wade Davis has been described as "a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet, and passionate defender of all of life's diversity."
An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, he holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent more than three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among 15 indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international best seller that appeared in ten languages and was later released by Universal as a motion picture.
His other books include Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rain Forest (1990), Shadows in the Sun (1993), Nomads of the Dawn (1995), The Clouded Leopard (1998), Rainforest (1998), Light at the Edge of the World (2001), The Lost Amazon (2004), Grand Canyon (2008), Book of Peoples of the World (ed. 2008), and One River (1996), which was nominated for the 1997 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. Into the Silence, an epic history of World War I and the early British efforts to summit Everest, was published in October, 2011. Sheets of Distant Rain will follow.
Davis is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2002 Lowell Thomas Medal (The Explorers Club) and the 2002 Lannan Foundation prize for literary nonfiction. In 2004 he was made an honorary member of the Explorers Club, one of just 20 in the hundred-year history of the club. In recent years his work has taken him to East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru, Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin, Togo, New Guinea, Vanuatu, and the high Arctic of Nunavut and Greenland.
A native of British Columbia, Davis, a licensed river guide, has worked as park ranger and forestry engineer and conducted ethnographic fieldwork among several indigenous societies of northern Canada. He has published 150 scientific and popular articles on subjects ranging from Haitian vodoun and Amazonian myth and religion to the global biodiversity crisis, the traditional use of psychotropic drugs, and the ethnobotany of South American Indians.
Davis has written for National Geographic, Newsweek, Premiere, Outside, Omni, Harpers, Fortune, Men's Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, Natural History, Utne Reader, National Geographic Traveler, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Globe and Mail, and several other international publications.
His photographs have been featured in a number of exhibits and have been widely published, appearing in some 20 books and more than 80 magazines, journals, and newspapers. His research has been the subject of more than 700 media reports and interviews in Europe, North and South America, and the Far East, and has inspired numerous documentary films as well as three episodes of the television series The X Files.
A professional speaker for nearly 20 years, Davis has lectured at the National Geographic Society, American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and California Academy of Sciences, as well as many other museums and some 200 universities, including Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Yale, and Stanford. He has spoken at the Aspen Institute, Bohemian Grove, Young President’s Organization, and TED Conference. His corporate clients have included Microsoft, Shell, Hallmark, Bank of Nova Scotia, MacKenzie Financials, Healthcare Association of Southern California, National Science Teachers Association, and many others.
An honorary research associate of the Institute of Economic Botany of the New York Botanical Garden, he is a fellow of the Linnean Society, the Explorers Club, and the Royal Geographical Society.
(Source: National Geographic)
An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, he holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent more than three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among 15 indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international best seller that appeared in ten languages and was later released by Universal as a motion picture.
His other books include Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rain Forest (1990), Shadows in the Sun (1993), Nomads of the Dawn (1995), The Clouded Leopard (1998), Rainforest (1998), Light at the Edge of the World (2001), The Lost Amazon (2004), Grand Canyon (2008), Book of Peoples of the World (ed. 2008), and One River (1996), which was nominated for the 1997 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. Into the Silence, an epic history of World War I and the early British efforts to summit Everest, was published in October, 2011. Sheets of Distant Rain will follow.
Davis is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2002 Lowell Thomas Medal (The Explorers Club) and the 2002 Lannan Foundation prize for literary nonfiction. In 2004 he was made an honorary member of the Explorers Club, one of just 20 in the hundred-year history of the club. In recent years his work has taken him to East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru, Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin, Togo, New Guinea, Vanuatu, and the high Arctic of Nunavut and Greenland.
A native of British Columbia, Davis, a licensed river guide, has worked as park ranger and forestry engineer and conducted ethnographic fieldwork among several indigenous societies of northern Canada. He has published 150 scientific and popular articles on subjects ranging from Haitian vodoun and Amazonian myth and religion to the global biodiversity crisis, the traditional use of psychotropic drugs, and the ethnobotany of South American Indians.
Davis has written for National Geographic, Newsweek, Premiere, Outside, Omni, Harpers, Fortune, Men's Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, Natural History, Utne Reader, National Geographic Traveler, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Globe and Mail, and several other international publications.
His photographs have been featured in a number of exhibits and have been widely published, appearing in some 20 books and more than 80 magazines, journals, and newspapers. His research has been the subject of more than 700 media reports and interviews in Europe, North and South America, and the Far East, and has inspired numerous documentary films as well as three episodes of the television series The X Files.
A professional speaker for nearly 20 years, Davis has lectured at the National Geographic Society, American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and California Academy of Sciences, as well as many other museums and some 200 universities, including Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Yale, and Stanford. He has spoken at the Aspen Institute, Bohemian Grove, Young President’s Organization, and TED Conference. His corporate clients have included Microsoft, Shell, Hallmark, Bank of Nova Scotia, MacKenzie Financials, Healthcare Association of Southern California, National Science Teachers Association, and many others.
An honorary research associate of the Institute of Economic Botany of the New York Botanical Garden, he is a fellow of the Linnean Society, the Explorers Club, and the Royal Geographical Society.
(Source: National Geographic)
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 6, 2020
Evocative photos with stimulating narrative. A call to action.
"An anthropologist from a distant planet landing in the United States would see many wondrous things. But he, she or it would also encounter a culture that revers marriage, yet allows half of its marriages to end in divorce; admires its elderly, yet has grandparents living with grandchildren in only 6% of its households; loves its children, yet promotes 24/7 devotion to the work place at the expense of family. By the age of eighteen the average American uses spent three years watching television or playing video games. One in five adults is clinically obese. The nation consumes two- thirds of the world's production of antidepressant drugs, even as it spends more money on armaments and war than the collective military budgets of its 17 closest rivals. Technological wizardry is balanced by the embrace of an economic model of production and consumption that challenges the very life support systems of the planet. Our way of life, inspired in so many aspects, does not represent the supreme achievement of human endeavor."
"An anthropologist from a distant planet landing in the United States would see many wondrous things. But he, she or it would also encounter a culture that revers marriage, yet allows half of its marriages to end in divorce; admires its elderly, yet has grandparents living with grandchildren in only 6% of its households; loves its children, yet promotes 24/7 devotion to the work place at the expense of family. By the age of eighteen the average American uses spent three years watching television or playing video games. One in five adults is clinically obese. The nation consumes two- thirds of the world's production of antidepressant drugs, even as it spends more money on armaments and war than the collective military budgets of its 17 closest rivals. Technological wizardry is balanced by the embrace of an economic model of production and consumption that challenges the very life support systems of the planet. Our way of life, inspired in so many aspects, does not represent the supreme achievement of human endeavor."
August 10, 2018
I recommend everyone interested in humanity and the big questions of life spend time with this book.
I have had this from the library a couple of times now and it sits at the table and I spend time with the subjects in the images and the thoughtful text as I have my breakfast. So not Read in the sense of many other books but experience, enjoyed, absorbed.
The images are so beautiful.
I have had this from the library a couple of times now and it sits at the table and I spend time with the subjects in the images and the thoughtful text as I have my breakfast. So not Read in the sense of many other books but experience, enjoyed, absorbed.
The images are so beautiful.
January 17, 2023
The perfect companion to The Wayfinders. Having ready access to the author's own photos in glorious full-colour spreads makes the text come alive. It was interesting how my internal biases became so much more obvious when they were confronted with these images.
April 15, 2017
The photos are amazing, and I love his insights about the value of diversity in all its forms.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews