The life
that appears

My great passion as a photographer has always been the landscape. Mountains, glaciers, forests and wide-open spaces. That is where I find much of what moves me to make photographs.

But nature has a good habit of surprising me.

Sometimes, while I am concentrating on the light falling across a mountain or on the forms of a landscape, an animal appears. It might be a bird landing a few metres away, a fox crossing the road, or some creature simply there, living its life, completely unaware of my presence.

And then my attention shifts.

I am not a photographer who regularly goes out in search of wildlife. I do not have the patience of those who spend entire days waiting for a particular species, and I deeply admire that work. My encounters tend to be far more accidental. I come across animals during my travels and, when circumstances allow, I try to make a good photograph.

Over the years I have gathered images from these encounters. Some were brief; others allowed me to watch for a long time. They all have one thing in common: they happened without my planning them.

This third portfolio brings together some of those photographs. Birds, mammals and other inhabitants of the places I have travelled through.

Because although I almost always set out in search of landscapes, there are moments when the landscape looks back at me.

GVIVANCO