Images and text: © Bruno
D'Amicis Photography - www.brunodamicis.com. All rights reserved worldwide
Spring can be very hot in
the Sahara and that day of April was no exception. I was walking
together with my guide through a proctected area in the middle of the
Grand Erg Oriental, a huge stretch of sand and nothing at the border
between Algeria and Tunisia. In the afternoon the heat was finally
releasing its grip and a gentle breeze was making the atmosphere a
bit more pleasant. Together with the coolness, the wind shaking the
tamarisks seemed to carry ancient voices. In the solid silence of the
desert then I fancied lost sounds of hunters and prey. Only a few
thousands years ago in the same spot where we were, in fact, there
must have been a rich savannah. A real one: with giraffes, lions,
acacias and the whole shebang of animals and plants we all know from
East Africa. Now, after seven millennia of climate changes, severe
droughts and massive extinctions, one could not find here much else
than sand, wind and silence though.
I had arrived here
following the tracks of something special, but also of a certain
photograph. A photograph I had seen many years before. It was 1990
and I was 11, when the Italian leading nature magazine “Airone”
published a very long article about the Saharan wildlife. The piece
was illustrated with the ground-breaking work of the late French
photographer Alain Dragesco, who had photographed many previously
unseen or extremely rare desert species in over a decade of Saharan
expeditions. Of the article I particularly remembered a double-spread
with perhaps one of Dragesco's most remarkable shots: a male Addax
antelope standing in a sandstorm.
That picture was filled
with ambiance and wildness; the massive white animal emerged with its
long, twisted horns from the ochre tones of the background. It looked
like a pale spectre, with the scars and wounds on its head, the clear
marks of a life of struggle in one of Earth's most hostile
environments. But that was not all. Next to the Addax picture, the
photo editor had placed a smaller frame. The picture in it was
showing a human body half covered in sand: an unlucky poacher who had
probably died of thirst or starvation in the pursue of the World's
rarest antelope. Another guarantee, it seemed to me, of the rarity of
Dragesco's Addax picture.
The strong combination of
the two images and relative stories had stirred my child imagination
like few other things had done before. The level of adventure, drama
and otherness I felt spilling from those two pages would be hard to
describe in words, and that visual experience left an indelible mark
on me. I know that if I have chosen one day to become a wildlife
photographer it has been mainly because I was dreaming of exploring
the Planet to make similar encounters in the wild, and, once back
home, be able to make other people feel the same magic as well.
Almost three decades have
passed since that picture was published, but it kept haunting me for
all this time. Probably very few remember today (or will ever know)
the name of Alain Dragesco and his great work, and this probably also
because he sadly passed away in 2002. The Addax, on the other hand,
remains a species on the verge of extinction.
I have always loved the
challenge represented by the photography of rare and elusive subject
living in difficult places. I prefer to have things simply happen in
front of my camera, rather than seize opportunities to realize
preconceived images. And this, beside the personal entertainment, for
I believe in the power of serendipitous pictures to inspire people.
The idea that a single strong picture could affect so much a person's
life, like that very one had done with me, has been often enough of a
drive for me to keep trying. Indeed, I have often thought one could
make a difference with photography.
Therefore, having in mind
Dragesco's example, I wanted to humbly follow in his footsteps and
try to continue his unfinished work with the endangered but often
ignored Saharan wildlife. I wanted to start where he had left and see
with my own eyes what was the ongoing situation with antelopes,
gazelles and so on.
The desert of Niger was
the highest ranking in my bucket list, not least because it hosts the
last wild population of Addax antelopes in the World. But, after
having missed a great opportunity to join a scientific expedition a
few years ago and having failed since to raise the required budget to
travel in the area, the political situation in the country had
worsened so much that reluctantly I had to change my plans. Meanwhile
most of the other countries in the heart of the Sahara have become
very unsafe or difficult to reach as well. To work in this region
requires very expensive and extensive logistics, hard-to-get permits
and political support. By now they are all virtually out of reach for
most of the self-assigned naturalists and photographers who wish to
get there. This is why, for my desert photography, I had started
focusing my attention to the somehow safer Maghreb.
From the mountains of
Morocco to the sands of Tunisia, I have spent part of the last nine
years exploring and photographing the northern end of the Sahara. I
have discovered amazing places and challenging subjects, and I have
fullfilled part of my longing to work in the desert. But I never
forgot that picture nor my initial dream. I knew that eventually I
would have been able to follow one day the tracks of the Addax in the
sands of the Sahara.
But I could not know that
things would have turned out very differently...
