By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Susan Middleton and David Littschwager show two
of their photographs of endangered plants.
THIRTEEN years ago, when David Littschwager and Susan Middleton invented the North American Endangered Species Project, they approached it as art rather than conservation. Both are professional photographers and not scientists, and their aim was to photograph endangered plants and animals of North America as things of beauty rather than part of a fragile environment. Portraits of
endangered beauty"We started that way, but we have evolved into passionate conservationists," Middleton said. Even so, they seem to be just about staying even - as a new plant or animal enters the list, an older listing either completely disappears, or with a happier agenda, has restored itself to numbers where it is no longer endangered.
Littschwager and Middleton work out of San Francisco, and are in the islands this week to update their photo collection for a book to be published next year. It will concern the endangered plants and animals of Hawaii, with an emphasis on the plants. Hawaii, as we all know, is the poster child of the Federal Endangered Species Act. One out of every four endangered plants and animals listed throughout the United States is struggling for survival right here in Hawaii.
Monday night, Littschwager and Middleton addressed the Hawaiian Botanical Society's meeting on the campus of the University of Hawaii, and with almost no publicity filled one of the larger auditoriums. Some of the audience came for the gorgeous photographs, but most of them seem motivated by the idea of doing something to preserve these endangered species, without any clear idea of what.
For more than an hour, the two presented one stunning image after another on a giant screen above the stage. Hibiscus clayii, Scaevola coriacea, Munroidendron racemosum - the Latin names rolled on as Middleton explained there were only three colonies left of one variety and another was clinging precariously to a bluff and in danger of being knocked over or eaten by a wild pig. There is a single Cyneai pinnatifida growing in the wild.Middleton and Littschwager have already published "Here Today: Portraits of Our Vanishing Species" and "Witness: Endangered Species of North America," and have been the subject of a National Geographic television special. Their work in progress about Hawaii's vanishing species is as yet unnamed. "We don't want doom and gloom. The working title is 'Paradise Up Close,' but neither one of us likes it," Middleton said.
Her experience is as a portrait photographer and chairwoman of the photography department of the California Academy of Science in San Francisco. His is as a commercial photographer, and both now approach their subjects as portraits rather than wildlife. None of their photographs includes any background, and all of them are taken against a neutral background, usually black.
"It is deceptively simple," Littschwager said. "We position the subject like a formal portrait, with no visual distractions in the background, no habitat. It takes the two of us to do this." One of them arranges the solid backdrop and the other manages the camera, a Swedish Hasselblad. The plants are more cooperative than the animals that tend to back out of the camera's field or, with predators, become dangerously interested in the photographers.
The results are dramatic, just the plant or animal or selected portions thereof, is centered on the slide. With animals, they frequently show only the head and chest as it looks directly into the lens. Some of their plant photography focuses on a leaf or flower without showing the rest of it. Others focus on a colony of plants, such as the collection of small succulents growing in a West Maui bog at Puu Kukui. The effect is like a tapestry. The results are not the same as a botanical print but are more in the realm of fine art.
So, as the audience watched one after another of the beautiful things headed for oblivion, the question arose: What can anybody do? Can the species be saved?
"The moral imperative is to err in favor of optimism," Littschwager said. "There's a lot we can do. We need to incorporate some provision for maintenance for protecting species on private land so there is an incentive for the landowner. Now the option is to get rid of the endangered species so as not to get involved in preservation.
"The decline can be altered. The plants are dependent upon us to have their habitats protected - they can't do on their own. We know how to make tissue cultures from endangered plants and raise them in a laboratory. The situation is sobering but it's not hopeless."
Gardening Calendar in Do It Electric!
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