As the pandemic raged on, Whitehorse-based wildlife photographer found himself walking his dog for hours a day. On one of these walks he had a run-in with one of the city’s many foxes, whose den was in an abandoned building on the city’s busy Front Street. So began Mather’s pandemic project to capture foxes in their not-so-natural habitats, “just to show that Whitehorse is their city, too.” Unexpected stills of the city’s thriving, resilient fox population that are flourishing, surviving, adapting and living with people.
For the last two years, Peter also captured photos of grizzlies fishing for salmon in southwestern Yukon, around Klukshu village, a traditional salmon harvesting spot in the summer months.
By using 12 remote camera traps, he has spent October, November and most of December, living in a trailer in the dark 19 hours a day. The only noise he could hear at night were the sounds of wolves howling in the distance and that of icicles hanging from grizzlies’ fur which sounded like chandeliers when they were walking.
All of this, waiting of capturing the perfect photo that usually gets for every six months in the field.
The Last Ice Bears:
In Northern Canada, as the winter settles in and the temperatures drop far below zero, we see one of the most unique natural phenomenons. Grizzly bears, who delay their hibernation for one last feed, become covered in hundreds of Icicles that hang from their fur as they wade in and out of freezing creeks chasing salmon. These ‘Ice Bears’ share the landscape, as they have for thousands of years, with the local first nations people who have long depended on the same salmon. Disappearing salmon, hunting pressure and climate changes threaten the existence of these ‘Ice Bears’.
Urban and Wild:
The Red Fox, who are celebrated for their cunning intelligence, have adapted to the human world with astonishing success and they are supremely designed to inhabit the borderlands of greenspaces and urban living. They are rapidly evolving to live in the new world. This can be seen in the Wilderness City of Whitehorse, in Northern Canada where the fox has found the ideal community straddling our new urban, wild world. In the city fox density is exceptionally high due to an abundance of food, but their lifespans are shortened due to the dangers of living within an urban space dominated by roads and cars.
Location:
Info
Location: Accademia dei Rozzi | Via di Città, 36 (SI)
Period: October 1st – November 20th 2022
Opening Time:
Friday: 03:00 pm-07:00 pm
Saturday-Sunday: 10:00 am-07:00 pm
Holidays: 10:00 am-07:00 pm
TICKET VALID FOR VISITING ALL THE EXHIBITIONS
Photographer Biography: Peter Mather is a fellow in the International League of Conservation Photographers, represented by National Geographic Image Collection, and an ambassador for Panasonic Cameras.
Mather’s stories include how a changing climate will affect wolverines in Alaska’s North Slope, the fight to protect the caribou calving grounds of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by the Gwich’in people of Northern Canada and Alaska, and the world’s largest Hand Games tournament hosted by the small Dene community of Bechoko.
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