The lions taught me photography. They taught me patience and the sense of beauty, a beauty that penetrates you.
An image of the earth, its landscapes, directly affects people. The beauty of the earth creates enormous emotion, and through that emotion, you can transmit knowledge and raise consciousness.
I wanted to be a scientist. I did a thesis on lions. But I realised photography can show things writing can’t. Lions were my professor of photography.
It’s time to come together. We all have the power to change, so what are we waiting for?
To have success in your professional life is not so hard. To succeed as a man is more difficult.
Will we be able to imagine a new culture of water?
The whole world is determined by trade – which is really the blood of the world. The driving force is everyone’s desire to have a better life. How? By consuming. For countries, the ‘Holy Grail’ is economic growth.
The West has become the world model; developing countries are dreaming of living like us, which is impossible. They should reject our model, because it is not sustainable. Developing countries should even give us the example, but unfortunately that’s not what happens.
The Rio Earth Summit in 1992 changed my life completely, turning me into an activist. From the air, you see things you can’t see from the ground – you really understand the impact of man, even in a place you know well. My work is meant to convince people we can no longer live like this.
Our children think our world will end. It’s a tragic thing. Adults don’t think that. They don’t see that we are eating the planet. But we are. If you take all the biomass of vertebrates on the planet, 98% are men and their domestic animals. All the wild animals in the world make up only 2%.
I’m not an expert when it comes to technology, but what changed things for me was autofocus. I used to have to throw away half my pictures because it was so difficult to get the focus right.
For nearly two years, I was flying above the planet with my camera. I knew straight away that this was something important to do, just at this moment, a portrait of the planet for the millennium year. I worked in 80 countries, fighting for money all the time.
For me, an aerial picture is no different than a close-up portrait. It’s a question of framing and angle. Helicopters are great for that. But I’ve also used planes. Of course, I always have a harness.
After Hurricane Katrina, over New Orleans, my helicopter crashed and the pilot and I were only saved because we fell on the roof of a flooded house that absorbed the shock. When the helicopter was spiraling downward out of control, I didn’t expect to survive at all.
I never lose an opportunity to speak about my obsession: humankind and the environment.
The key of ‘The Earth from Above,’ and of ‘Home’ is to show the beauty of the planet, and thereby to promote love for it.
I always take hundreds and hundreds of pictures. I used to work for ‘National Geographic,’ and they gave us a lot of film.
The trust we build over the years if of tremendous help to me when I start in a new project and need to find associates.
No one is an environmentalist by birth. It is only your path, your life, your travels that awaken you.
Life is like carrying a message from the child you were to the old man you’ll become, without losing it along the way.