Jim Brandenburg

Renowned National Geographic photographer Jim Brandenburg is considered one of the premier wildlife photographers in the world. However, this Minnesota-based artist doesn't measure his success by the numerous national and international awards and honors he has received. Rather, he gleans a well-earned sense of satisfaction from a steadfast and long-term commitment to his almost mystical quest to explore and understand the wilderness. As he says, "Ever since I was a boy, I have had a passion for telling stories about the forest and the prairies."

Brandenburg took his first photograph at age fourteen, then further developed his photographic skills and style while majoring in art at the University of Minnesota. After college, Brandenburg worked for the Worthington Daily Globe in southern Minnesota learning the trade of the "hard news" photojournalist. While at the paper, he began freelancing for National Geographic Magazine, and joined this heralded publication as a contract photographer in 1978. An abbreviated list of Brandenburg's project for National Geographic include: "The Tallgrass Prairie," "The Canadian Rockies," "South Dakota Badlands," "At Home with the Arctic Wolf," and "Ellesmere Island Life in the High Arctic."

His photographs have appeared in Life, Newsweek, Time, The Smithsonian, and Geo, often on the covers of these magazines. His works in Manchuria was featured in a book about China, and his photography in the Highlands of Scotland appeared in Discovering Britain and Ireland. He has just published Images of Home, a personal and intimate collection of black and white photographs that depicts the many fascinating people and places in the author's home state, Minnesota.

Brandenburg was twice named Magazine Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photographer's Association (regarded as the "Oscar" for the industry), and in 1988, he was named Wildlife Photographer of the Year by the British Museum of Natural History and the BBC, sponsored by Kodak. In 1981, he was commissioned by the United States Postal Service to photograph and design a set of ten wildlife stamps which were released on May 14th of that year. And in 1991, he was honored with the Global 500 Environmental World Achievement Award from the United Nations Environment program which was presented to him by King of Coastal Sweden.

For more than twenty years, Brandenburg has worked in Canada, Alaska, Minnesota, China, and the former Soviet Union. In the spring of 1980, he discovered on Ellesmere Island in the high Arctic what be one of the last packs of wolves not ingrained with fear from an excessive proximity to man. Photographs from that trip resulted in his bestselling book, White Wolf (with text by Brandenburg), that continues to delight and inform wildlife enthusiasts. Brandenburg has also produced, directed, and was the cinematographer for the extraordinary popular 1988 National Geographic/BBC Television Documentary titled simply, "White Wolf," aired world-wide in more than 120 countries.

Today, the force that continues to fuel Brandenburg's photography is his ever-deepening fascination with the wolf, a romance he pursues daily from his rural Northern Minnesota home near the Canadian border, also home territory for the Gray, or, as it is also called, the Timber Wolf.

Brandenburg speaks of the "elusive" nature of wolves, and the challenge that creates in photographing them. On a planet threatened by mankind's technological excess, Brandenburg's own "dances with wolves," falls perfectly in line with other environmentally-concerned movements and individuals as the expression of only hope for saving the earth, and ourselves as a species. As the photographer says, "I'm interested in people's relationship with wolves...As much as it touches a feared aspect in us, the wolf as a symbol of wildness that we're trying to reconcile and make an agreement with..."


The Photography of Jim Brandenburg