ART WOLFE
When were you first introduced to photography? My father and mother were both wedding photographers. I grew up watching them take pictures, but I also knew wedding photography was definitely not something I wanted to do. Both encouraged me to go into the arts.
When did you start taking pictures?
In college I was centred towards art and painting, but during those years I also started climbing many of the mountains of the American North West, and I began taking my camera to document the climbs. I took to photography like a duck to water, simply because I was able to create original compositions far faster than I could by sitting at a blank canvas. So by the time I graduated from college, my allegiances had shifted from painting to photography.
What made you concentrate on the natural world?
I was a naturalist at seven years old, and knew every bird, tree and mammal in the forest. I had these little field guides, and I just memorised them. When I wasn’t painting, I was playing in the forest. Our family was modest in income, so we would simply go camping in the nearby mountains. Nature was always around, always front and centre in my life.
How has
