Some thoughts and reflections on the use of illustration in
Biodiversity Education Campaigns
Stephen
D. Nash
Scientific
Illustrator, Conservation International, Visiting Research Associate, Department
of Anatomical Sciences, and Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Art,
S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook, New York, U.S.A.
Email: snash@ms.cc.sunysb.edu
Date
of online publication 26 February 2009
ISSN 0974-7907
(online) | 0974-7893 (print)
Editor: Sanjay Molur
Manuscript
details:
Ms # o1914
Received 29
December 2007
Final revised
received 13 February 2008
Finally accepted
15 March 2008
Citation: Nash, S.D.
(2008). Some thoughts and reflections on the use of illustration in
Biodiversity Education Campaigns. Journal of Threatened Taxa 1(1):
119-125.
Copyright: © S.D.
Nash 2008. Creative Commons Attribution
3.0 Unported License. JoTT allows unrestricted use of this article in any
medium for non-profit purposes, reproduction and distribution by providing
adequate credit to the authors and the source of publication.
Author Details: Stephen D.
Nash is a native of Great Britain, and has been Scientific Illustrator for Conservation
International since 1989, producing images for conservation and biological
publications. He is based at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook, and is currently at work completing
illustrations of every known primate taxon.
Acknowledgements: I am grateful
to John Aguiar and Matthew Richardson, both much better wordsmiths than I, for
their very helpful comments on the text of this article.
Abstract:The need to appreciate the interconnectedness of all life on Earth has never
been more important than it is today, as our own species, mostly through
ignorance, threatens to unravel the rich biological tapestry of which we are a
part, and upon which we ultimately depend. Art, and especially imagery, can play a crucial role in reestablishing
the profound and vital link between ourselves as individuals and the natural
world. Recognizing this,
conservationists are making ever more use of illustration in education
campaigns worldwide on behalf of endangered wildlife and ecosystems. In this article I have tried to articulate my
own feelings about nature, to trace the path that led me to work in this
specialized area of art, and to relate some of the lessons I have learned
applying illustration to conservation.
Keyword: art and science; biological
illustration; conservation education campaigns; flagship species; primates.
The origins of
Art - whether in the form of pictures, film, theater, sculpture, or music - are
still a matter of intense academic debate. What is without question, though, is that its appeal is widespread - and indeed perhaps
almost universal, with vast potential for use in conservation education.
When working on
a drawing for the purpose of conveying to the viewer the form and beauty of one
of our fellow-primates perhaps, or a rhinoceros, or a toad, or a fish, I am
acutely aware that what I am doing is part of a tradition that goes back in
history certainly 33,000 years, and probably much, much further.
As John Berger
(1980) points out in his essay ‘Why Look At Animals?’, the first symbols for
humankind were animals, the first paint was probably animal blood, and for
thousands of years the human experience of the world was charted using animal
signs. The relationship between our
species, Homo sapiens, and all of Earth’s other inhabitants has
undergone many changes over the millennia, but has always remained
interconnected.
We are now,
however, at a crucial point in both our own history, as well as that of our
planet. Quite simply: the impact we are
having upon the environment - and upon all of the other life forms among which
we have developed - is now so devastating that we have the power to eradicate
most of the species on the planet within a very short time.
If that should
happen - if the predicted human-caused “extinction spasm” does occur - it will
be mainly owing to our ignorance of the interdependence of life on earth.
Moreover, such a catastrophe would I fear precipitate a decline in the quality
of human life so profound that, although it might take generations to realize,
would ultimately be inimical to our own continued survival.
The 19thCentury Native American Chief Seattle put it in this way: ‘If all the beasts
were gone, men would die of a great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens
to the beasts happens to the man. All
things are connected…’, more recently, the biologist E.O. Wilson (1984) has
written of what he terms ‘biophilia’ - a need we feel for the presence of other
creatures around us, essential for the continued health of our own species.
We express this
biophilia clearly and strongly while young, when we are fascinated by stories
and images of, and actual encounters with, animals. In my opinion, our own innocence at that
stage of our lives finds obvious resonance in other beings who are similarly
uncomplicated by the sophistications of adulthood.
It is also as
children that our sense of wonder is at its strongest, as it was during the
infancy of our species. The ancient
images found on the rock walls of caves or canyons or on boulders in France,
Tanzania, Australia, and elsewhere are among the most evocative renderings ever
created. The ability to be amazed at the
variety of life in all its manifestations can be dulled or even extinguished
later in life, usually by the influence of other adults, but - in my view - it
remains a key feature of what it is to be truly human.
These feelings
are what lies behind the drawings that I produce for conservation education
campaigns, blending what I hope is scientific accuracy with something less
obvious, possibly irrational, and perhaps in some way childlike. Always at the back of my mind are thoughts of
our own future, of our own long-term well being as a species.
Perhaps
subconsciously, I see the possibility of people becoming re-acquainted with
animals and plants through art, and thus reawakening their own sense of
wonder. The most realistic and detailed
rendering of a plant, for example, is an incomparably poor substitute for the
living original, but it has its value as a product of observation, inspiration,
and even veneration. It is an attempt at
understanding, and an attempt at encouraging others to do the same.
During my years
at art college in England, I would regularly visit the London Zoo, where we
students were encouraged to draw whichever animals appealed to us. As I worked, I had the opportunity to listen
to the conversations and comments of other visitors as they beheld the same
creatures as me, and I noticed that two groups of animals in particular would
elicit strong responses, both positive and negative, in the zoo-going
public. I have since come to believe
that this is a world-wide phenomenon, one that was examined in some detail in two
books by Desmond Morris - ‘Men and Apes’ (1966) and ‘Men and Snakes’ (1965).
The two groups
of animals that I speak of are, of course, the primates and the reptiles. Monkeys and apes can remind us, by their
behaviors and appearance, that we share almost all of our genetic code with
them, and are therefore linked with them to all other mammals. This can be comforting and enlightening to
some people, and unsettling or even horrifyingly offensive and frightening to
others.
In the same way,
such creatures as snakes, lizards and turtles are either endlessly-fascinating
“living jewels”, or else disgusting, primitive and worthless vermin, depending
upon the individual’s point of view. The
result of having observed these reactions among my fellow zoo-goers was to make
me especially interested in, and sympathetic towards, the animals in question.
Just a few weeks
ago I visited Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida, where I was reminded of the
huge influence that the films and images of Walt Disney and the organization he
founded have had on what are now several generations of people around the
world. It is an influence which some
find controversial, but I personally see it as more and more reinforced and
validated by current research, in that Disney encouraged us to see and treat
animals as individuals, as living beings far more complex than the virtual
automata of the old Cartesian philosophical system.
To me, the
kinship between our own species and all others is obvious, but to openly
acknowledge this can be disturbing to many people, because of the possible
consequences to their established world-view and to the prevailing economic,
cultural and even dietary norms. (Everyone ‘draws the line’ of compassion
somewhere: I personally have been a vegetarian for all but the first six years
of my life).
My own
introduction to art came, at a very young age, through the medium of the comic
book. The antiquity, subtlety and
universality of the visual story-telling techniques to be found in these
publications has been demonstrated with great eloquence and thoroughness by
such authors as Scott McCloud (1993) and Will Eisner (1985). Moreover, the comic book format has been used
very successfully even for conservation education.
Comic book art
is often highly economical in its detail, but in the best examples, what the
artist leaves out is supplemented by the mind of the reader, with a potential
for a powerful immersion in the story. All art is, to a greater or lesser degree, ‘abstract’, in that not every
detail can (or indeed should) be included, and the influence of comic book art
is evident in the pen and ink monochrome drawings I have included here as
examples.
Comics have not
been my only source of inspiration, however. Another important influence has been that of the Victorian Natural
History illustrators, such as Joseph Wolf (see Schulze-Hagen & Geus 2000),
Frederick William Frohawk (see Chatfield 1987), and especially Edward Lear (see
Davidson 1933; Lehmann 1977; Chitty 1989), whose compassion for his animal
subjects was as great as his artistic talent. His drawings of parrots and tortoises in particular are considered among
the finest ever created, but he was also able to communicate his wonder equally
well through his poetry.
Lear disliked
having to work from anything other than living subjects, but that was by no
means always possible, and even those artists who accompanied scientific
expeditions often had to draw dead specimens. This presented many difficulties and often resulted in distorted,
unnatural postures and features.
Leonardo da
Vinci’s own acute sensitivity and empathy is shown in his frequent purchase,
and subsequent release, of caged birds from markets in the towns where he
lived. He wrote: “I have from an early
age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will
come to look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of
men”. This did not, however, prevent him
from conducting anatomical investigation, in the form of dissections, of both
animal and human subjects.
Da Vinci’s
desire to know his subjects ‘from the inside out’ by trying to understand their
anatomy is one that I too understand, and for a few years I was intent upon
pursuing a career in medical illustration. Even today, I often consult old comparative anatomical illustrations of
an animal before embarking on a drawing, especially if the species has been
rarely photographed.
While at college
I was fortunate to be taught by a number of gifted illustrators, and two in
particular - despite fundamental differences in their methods and
approaches - have had a profound
influence upon me and my work, and deserve mention here. Both have recently retired from teaching.
One is Edward
O.Z. Wade, whose exquisite and meticulous drawings and paintings, especially of
reptiles and amphibians, are done almost exclusively from prepared dead
specimens. His enthusiastic and generous
sharing of his encyclopaedic knowledge of taxonomy and its history and
development was a wonderfully illuminating experience.
The other major
influence on my work, John Norris Wood, only very reluctantly works from
anything other than a living creature, and strives to capture in his
illustration the character of his subject rather than a scale-by-scale
likeness. John’s most passionate
interest is also in the reptiles and amphibians.
Both of these
illustrators dearly love the animals they portray, and to me it is powerfully
evident in their work. A drawn, painted,
or sculpted image is as open to analysis, as revealing, and ultimately as
personal, as any piece of handwriting. I
think it is inevitable that a part of the artist is left in the artwork once it
is completed, and such subtle residues can certainly augment a verbal message,
whether intentionally or not, communicated at a very deep level. The genuine power of the artist’s concern for
his subject will always come through.
Yet it was to
take the foresight, imagination, and courage of another individual, not an
artist himself, to see the potential contribution of imagery to modern
biodiversity conservation efforts, and to take that vision further than anyone
else to date. That person is Russell Mittermeier, President of the Arlington,
Virginia-based organization Conservation International. In the quarter-century that I have worked for
him I have taken on what to me have been the most daunting artistic challenges
I have ever faced, not the least being a project to illustrate every taxon of
the primate order.
This ambitious
(some would say foolhardy) undertaking, which I established as a personal goal
while a student, has been lately informed with more significance, urgency and
energy by my own research into my ancestry. As I have delved deeper and deeper in time, moving away from the recent,
outermost leaf tips of my family tree towards the comparatively ancient trunk,
it has become ever more obvious how closely related all of humanity really
is. So it is that it has been really
quite easy to take the next step and acknowledge, not just intellectually but
viscerally, our close relationship with our zoological ‘cousins’, the primates.
Beyond even this
realization comes the acceptance of our membership of a global family that
includes all life on the planet. This is
not a new concept, of course, and it has been part of many philosophies and
religions for centuries before recent scientific breakthroughs, especially in
the field of genetics, have given it scientific weight. My work has become for me a celebration of
this personal acknowledgment of these wider connections.
The Muriqui (Brachyteles
arachnoides) of the Atlantic Forest of eastern Brazil was the subject of
the first ‘image experiment’ in primate-focused conservation education with
which I was involved. The largest and
most ape-like of the New World monkeys, its original distribution lay in the
region first colonized by the Portuguese in the early 1500s; today, five
centuries later, the handful of remnant muriqui - now split into distinct
northern and southern species - are surviving not so far from some of the
largest cities in the world, including São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
In 1982,
Muriquis were little known outside of eastern Brazil, and public awareness was
confined to the available primatological literature. At the time we began our campaign, the animal
did not even have a clearly-defined identity; within Brazil it was called
either ‘o mono’, which means only ’the monkey’, or ‘mono
carvoeiro’ (‘charcoal-burner monkey’), while in English it was given the
misleading appellation of ‘woolly spider monkey’.
The local
Brazilian Indian name ’muriqui’ seemed to be the most appropriate, and so, Dr.
Mittermeier and his Brazilian colleagues orchestrated an education
campaign. I produced a number of designs
for posters, stickers, and t-shirts - including designs showing the other local
primate fauna, and teams distributed these materials throughout the Atlantic
Forest region.
The impact of
the muriqui campaign was astonishing, and it catalyzed an entire homegrown
response, the animals appearing on everything from local phone book covers and
postage stamps to newspaper cartoons, and even snack food packaging - a
phenomenon that continues to this very day.
Since then I
have contributed to campaigns that have used animals, and even plants, of many
sizes, shapes and taxonomic orders as ‘focal’ or ‘flagship’ species. And why not? Each has a unique characteristic - be it taxonomic, biogeographic or
otherwise - which can help it represent entire endangered ecosystems.
The Indri (Indri
indri), like the Muriqui, has the distinction of being the largest nonhuman
primate in the country in which it lives. This lemur comes from the island nation of Madagascar, where these
prosimian primates historically flourished in isolation from competition from
monkeys and apes until the arrival of humans a few thousand years ago. With a very distinctive black and white
coloration and haunting, powerful vocal-izations, the Indri makes a very
appealing flagship species for the rapidly vanishing rainforest biome in
Madagascar.
The Indri’s
striking beauty and endemism should qualify it for national animal status, and
one of its local names, ‘babakoto’, or ‘ancestor of man’, is indicative of the
high esteem in which it is held by most Malagasy. The t-shirts worn by members of the Association
of Guides of Andasibe prominently feature the Indri, but also depict the area’s
other lemurs, and constitute a sort of ‘wearable field guide’, an educational
aid which we have experimented with elsewhere in Madagascar as well as in Ivory
Coast and Indonesia.
There is no
doubt that in the past quarter century we have learned many important
lessons. One concerns the importance of
customizing education materials to the culture and even the climate of the
place in which the campaign is to be conducted. This may seem obvious, but, for example, full-size posters quickly
disintegrate in a humid tropical environment, whereas shirts and laminated
mini-posters do not. Stickers are not
appropriate for communities where walls do not exist.
Another lesson
learned is the importance of the supporting role that can be played by
organizations such as the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators, or
G.N.S.I. This very active and
wonderfully friendly group of people, founded by staff illustrators in the
Smithsonian Institution in 1968, now has almost a thousand members worldwide
who share insights, techniques and experiences through G.N.S.I.-sponsored
conferences and publications. The
organization has always encouraged scientific illustrators from developing
countries to join, and I have seen first hand how this sort of help can result
in excellent materials being designed and produced in the places where
endangered animals and plants actually survive.
At a recent
meeting of scientists involved in conservation education, I met a young
Peruvian scientist studying the seriously endangered Yellow-tailed Woolly
Monkey (Oreonax flavicauda). She
spoke of having discovered some of our education materials from the 1980s in a
museum storeroom, and of the need to resurrect the campaign on the animal’s
behalf today. It was a reminder that
conservation education campaigns must be continuous, and that the focal species
must become a permanent part of the local culture, and a source of pride from
generation to generation.
The
Yellow-tailed Woolly Monkey is in fact a perfect example of the
interdependence within an ecosystem: The monkey’s Andean cloud forest habitat
absorbs, and slowly but continuously releases, rainwater which is vital for the
rice fields on the mountains’ lower slopes. If the forests are destroyed, the monkey and the other local wildlife
will become extinct - and rice cultivation will no longer be possible as the
fields are destroyed by floods and drought.
Just as the
health of human societies and that of the environment are mutually dependent,
any separation of the Arts and the Sciences is artificial and undesirable,
especially in the face of the many serious ecological challenges facing us
today. People of all backgrounds can,
and must, play a role in the maintenance of the earth’s biodiversity, which is,
I believe, our biological extended family as well as our long-term support
system.
References
Berger, J. (1980). “Why Look At
Animals?”, in “About Looking”. Readers and Writers Publishing Cooperative,
London.
Chatfield, J. (1987). “F. W. Frohawk:
His Life and Work”. Crowood Press, Ramsbury, Wiltshire.
Chitty, S. (1989). “That Singular
Person Called Lear”. Atheneum New York.
Davidson, A. (1933). “Edward Lear”.
John Murray. London.
Eisner, W. (1985). “Comics and Sequential
Art”. Poorhouse Press. Tamarac, Florida.
Hodges, E. (1989) (Ed.). “The Guild
Handbook of Scientific Illustration”. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.
Lehmann, J. (1977). “Edward Lear
and His World”. Thames and Hudson, London.
McCloud, S. (1993). “Understanding
Comics”. Harper, New York.
Morris, R.D. (1966). “Men and Apes”.
Hutchinson, London.
Morris, R.D. (1965). “Men and
Snakes”. Hutchinson, London.
Schulze-Hagen, K. & A. Geus (2000)
(Eds.).“Joseph Wolf (1820-1899) Animal Painter”. Basilisken-Presse, Marburg an der
Lahn, Germany.
Wilson, E.O. (1984).“Biophilia”. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.