ABOUT JANA
One of the things I remember vividly from my childhood is that I have always loved animals. You couldn’t take me on a walk without having to pause repeatedly so I could pet the neighbour’s cat, greet some stranger’s dog or to inspect various insects and chase birds. This childhood fascination developed into a love of all things wild and natural and when I received my first camera (a hand-me-down from a family friend when I was fourteen) my enchantment with nature became my subject matter through the lens. Those were the days of analogue photography and I was fortunate to have a little studio at my school where I could wonder at the magic of developing prints in the dark room.
For a time, as life meandered and my passion and efforts were focused on the theatre, my camera gathered dust at the back of a cupboard. But true inspirations in life have tendency of resurfacing at the right time and my love for photography was rekindled at the beginning of a global adventure that would keep me fairly nomadic up to the present day.
Eventually my journey took me to Mama Africa’s wild open spaces where I had the privilege to live and work in some of the continent’s untouched and extraordinary protected areas. This experience changed my life and realigned my outlook on the world entirely. An urban lifestyle of shops, bars and underground railways was replaced by vast, intact natural ecosystems of mind-blowing diversity. I was bewitched by the intricacies of the whole, where every creature and plant exists in an ever shifting balance as part of a fragile yet powerful system of nature. Within these last biomes as modern humans we should only ever play a very minor role of protection and preservation, though sadly it seems our more recent performances have been those of destruction driven by greed.
Photography is a medium through which I share my deep appreciation for the natural world, in the hopes of inspiring the robust protection and respect that we as humans surely owe her. We are not lost within the wilderness, we are lost without it.