Andrey Gudkov

“I never had doubts on which genre to work in,” says A. Gudkov. I understood that wildlife photography is the genre of photography in which I always wanted to work. My textbooks were photo albums of word-famous wildlife – Steve Bloom, Franz Lanting, Michael Nikolos, Nick Brandt, Steve Winter, Michael Poliza and others. Their works inspired, taught, gave a kind of nutritional environment for creativity, acted as critics. Gradually, step by step, by trial and error, I developed my own style. At the beginning of this journey, everything seemed simple and understandable. However the more I was photographing, the more I came to realize how difficult this genre was and how endless is the field for creativity here. Over the past few years, I have visited many hard-to-reach corners of the world, where nature has still preserved its original beauty, which, so far, has not been touched by ubiquitous technological progress and globalization. The world around us is changing very quickly and, sometimes, irreversibly. For me, it is very important that as many people as possible would be able to see these photos to understand that nature is very fragile, vulnerable and variable. In my opinion, the task of a wildlife photographer is to try to capture and show people the disappearing, rare beauty and variety of life forms that modern humanity will still be able to find.