Ami Vitale: Living the Story
It’s an overcast day in northern Kenya, but that doesn’t stop photojournalist Ami Vitale from capturing a moment of playfulness at Reteti Elphant Sanctuary. Though elephants are the bread-and-butter of the organization, they aren’t the only wildlife who call it home. On this day, wildlife keeper Banki, wearing a yellow and brown “Jamaica” jersey, beams with a wide smile as one of the resident giraffes, Shorty, leans in for a smooch, draping a big ol’ giraffe lip over the keeper’s chin like a suction cup.
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The joy and intimacy of the moment resonates beyond the image. But this is no surprise to those familiar with Ami Vitale’s work. Capturing moments like this — where the everyday meets the profound — is what she does best.
Shorty the giraffe greets Banki, a keeper at the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary. Photo by Ami Vitale.
Vitale has visited over 100 countries — she’s contracted malaria, defied death’s grasp, and donned a panda suit in China — all in the name of living the stories we see in her photos. She was there when a group of giraffes had to be evacuated by boat from a crocodile-ravaged island. And she was there when the planet’s last known male northern white rhinoceros took his final breath. The stories she captures all have one thing in common — conflict: conflict between people, between natural and built habitats, between existence and extinction. But Kenya is her favourite place. It is here that conflict meets its biggest enemy: community.
“My work is not just about people. It’s not just about wildlife either. It’s about how the destiny of both people and wildlife are intertwined and how small and deeply interconnected our world is,” Vitale told the photography site PetaPixel. The Reteti Sanctuary is a prime example of the good that comes when people share a common goal, in this case rehabilitating elephants affected by contemporary threats, such as poaching and climate change, and returning them to the wild. The sanctuary is unique in that it is community run effort—all of the keepers come from the area and are specially-trained to work with the animals, deepening the bond between the people, the animals, and the land they both share.
Keeper Joseph Wachira comforts Sudan, the last male northern white rhinoceros, as he takes his final breath. Photo by Ami Vitale.
Getting the opportunity to shoot a photo, like the one of Banki and Shorty, is the result of Vitale’s painstaking hard work. Not just the technical skill it takes to frame an amazing photo, but the time and patience involved in gaining trust and access to the story behind the story. By going deep, however, Vitale embraces her subject in a way that demonstrates her commitment to the project. For example, at Reteti, Vitali uses a noiseless camera, so that she doesn’t scare the traumatized elephants. Her care and respect for her subject has given her access to some of the most amazing stories to grace the pages of National Geographic.
Take, for example, the pandas.
You know the ones—the black and white fuzzy creatures that are simultaneously adorable and majestic. They are also notoriously difficult to work with, but that’s partly by design. Pandas are under siege —development and agricultural expansion have robbed them of their habitats and there are currently fewer than 2000 pandas in the wild and around 500 in captivity. For this reason, China has been working hard to breed pandas with the goal of “re-wilding” them, sending them to live in their natural habitats. The challenge is that humans are the pandas number one threat, which means they cannot, under any circumstances become accustomed to the people to raise them.
This posed some challenges for Vitale, who intended to capture the work of several sanctuaries in
China, including Bifengxia Panda Base and the Wolong Nature Reserve, among others. To get the story, Vitale donned a Panda suit so as not to disrupt her subject. The result? Captivating images that bring out the beauty of this elusive (and fluffy) creature and a National Geographic article that serves as the defacto authority on Panda conservation.
Ami Vitale wears a panda suit while working on location in China. Photo by Robin Cox.
Vitale hasn’t always focused her lens on wildlife, however. Her photojournalism career started in some of the most dangerous places on earth — warzones. "I found myself in places such as Kosovo, Angola, Gaza, Afghanistan, and Kashmir,” Vitale wrote in a 2019 National Geographic article. “My reason for going, I told myself, was to document the brutality. I thought the most powerful stories were those driven by violence and destruction.”
The dangers of war, though, took their toll and Vitale had more than one brush with death during her work. In Gaza, she was running to get close to a developing story when the batteries fell out of her camera—a minor inconvenience that ended up saving her life. “When I stopped to pick them up, a helicopter with a missile came in close and vaporised the building I was running to get to,” she recalled to Capture Magazine in 2018. Getting so close to danger—and not for the first time--gave the photographer a moment of pause. “I have to be thoughtful about how and where I work. No picture is worth putting yourself in such grave danger.”
Vitale photographs monsoon season in Bangladesh. Photo by Michael Davie.
It should come as no surprise that her commitment to bringing these complex stories to life has garnered her several accolades, both as a photojournalist and for her humanitarian work. In addition, being named as a National Geographic Woman of Impact (2019) and winning first place in the 2021 World Press Photo competition (for her nature photography), she was recently honoured with the 2022 Humanitarian Award at the Lucie awards — the photography equivalent of winning a Lifetime achievement award at the Oscars.
Today Vitale focuses on the conflicts that matter—saving animal species from the brink of extinction. Her non-profit Vital Impacts helps to support grassroots organizations doing the hard work of conservation. By auctioning off fine art prints of Vitale and other photojournalists, the organization is able to support a number of conservation groups, including Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots and Project Ranger, an organization that actively works to prevent poaching in Africa.
It's this chance to do good, to make a difference, that makes it all worthwhile for Vitale. At the end of the day, it isn’t the awards or seeing her work in some of the most renowned journals that keeps her going. It’s the opportunity to show others how connected we all are — with the natural world and with each other.
Vitale’s work is a simple, yet powerful, reminder that each of us has the opportunity to make a impact. Even if your only tool is a camera.
Arts Commons Presents’ National Geographic Live series is made possible by the support of ConocoPhillips Canada.
