Up close and personal

Guido Bonett: The Natural History of the Maltese Islands: As seen through a photographer’s lens, BDL Publishing, Malta, 2011, 384 pp.

One of the questions lovers of natural history illustration ask themselves is: Is it art? Valérie Chansigaud thinks not quite.

The Natural History of the Maltese Islands is a refreshingly unpretentious book that delivers exactly what it promises- Mark-Anthony Falzon

In her Histoire de l’illustration naturaliste (Delachaux et Niestlé, 2009) she draws a distinction between say Carel Fabritius’ painting of a Goldfinch (1654) and Sharpe’s illustration of the same in his A Handbook to the Birds of Great Britain (1896). For Chansigaud the diagnostic feature of natural history illustrations, as opposed to art, is that the former attach a scientific and descriptive text to a picture.

On her part, Judith Magee, the author of the Natural History Museum’s Art of Nature (2009), is happy to conjoin the two both in the title and in the rest of the book.

It is indeed hard to take in work like Ernst Haeckel’s wonderful Kunstformen der Natur (1899-1904) and not respond as one might to a Brueghel still life.

Guido Bonett’s work is far removed from this kind of ambiguity. Each photograph comes with an expert (scientific) text, for which the author had the advice of a number of specialists including Edwin Lanfranco on flora and David Mifsud on beetles. There is little attempt to look at nature in novel ways or in the context of a landscape. Rather the emphasis is on the individual plant or animal as a specimen to be rendered as accurately as possible for the purposes of identification. The reason is partly to be found in the section of the book where the author presents a set of ‘rules’ for shooting nature ‘correctly’. Which means we can expect composition, lighting, and effects to be standard and procedural. Is this therefore a boring or ‘bad’ book? Not at all. That’s because its honesty makes up for the self-prescribed lack of creativity. The aim throughout is to show us nature ‘as it really is’. It turns out that’s feast for the eyes enough.

Bonett is a serial hobbyist who pours passion, time, and commitment into whatever he does. All three are present in good measure here. Anyone who has tried their hand at nature photography will know how difficult it is to get close at all, let alone to get a decent shot.

Bonett is at his best taking close-ups (macro shots) of insects. Butterflies and moths were one of Bonett’s first loves and I suspect that’s where his heart still is.

Apart from the pure pleasure of looking, the book serves two main purposes. First, it can be used as a sort of photographic guide book. That’s because it features plants and animals that one is very likely to encounter in the field. I’m happy to learn that the little gem of a moth I came across the other day was in fact a Crimson-speckled Flunkey Uthetesia pulchella, a wide-ranging species which was once considered common but has now become quite rare. And that the huge spider I saw at Delimara last summer was a Lobed Argiope Argiope lobata, which spins a web characterised by a zig-zag of silk called a stabilimenta. This is what Chansigaud means when she talks about attaching texts to nature.

Second, it is intended as a beginner’s manual of nature photography. Each picture comes with useful tips on effects plus basic information on shutter speed, focal length, aperture, ISO, and shooting mode.

These are meant to be used in conjunction with a substantial section on equipment, ethics, fieldcraft, and such. BDL have done an excellent job. The presentation is very close to impeccable and the quality of the reproductions more than satisfactory.

Particularly good photographs include two Lesser Emperor dragonflies in tandem, a Small Praying Mantis, and a Silver-striped Hawkmoth caterpillar. The time-series photographs of a Swallowtail butterfly emerging from its pupa are wonderful – nothing extraordinary photographically but the subject is special. The Mulberry Wood Borer shows off the raw structural power of insects that makes them such a successful group.

Animals with a backbone are less well represented. The birds tend not to be particularly exciting, though the photograph of a Chiffchaff hovering around a bunch of ripe prickly pears is most charming. There is also a rare shot of two intertwined Western Whip Snakes.

The Natural History of the Maltese Islands is a refreshingly unpretentious book that delivers exactly what it promises, that is, “presents a simple introduction to those that are new to photography and to highlight the possibilities that exist on these islands that allow the aspiring nature photographer to participate in this rewarding activity, and hopefully also encourage others to start looking at our world in a different way, camera in hand” (19). The protagonists do the rest.