ST. PETERSBURG — “Wolves: Photography by Ronan Donovan,” a traveling photography exhibit curated by The National Museum of Wildlife Art and the National Geographic Society, will open on Saturday, May 9, at the James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art, 150 Central Ave., St. Petersburg.
The exhibition features Ronan Donovan’s stunning images and videos of wild wolves in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Ellesmere Island in the high Canadian Arctic. Since 2014, National Geographic Explorer and photographer Ronan Donovan has examined the relationship between wild wolves and humans in order to better understand the animals, our shared history, and what drives the persistent human-wolf conflict. The exhibition’s images and videos highlight the contrast between wolves that live in perceived competition with humans and wolves that live without human intervention. “Wolves” will continue through Sept. 7.
“Wolves” will introduce visitors to the daily lives of wolves in the Arctic — how they hunt, play, travel, and rest in one of the harshest environments on Earth — with unparalleled intimacy. By contrast, the wolves of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are fearful of humans, making it nearly impossible to document their daily lives. One of the distinctions made clear in the images is the ability to see wolf pups in the Arctic, which allowed Donovan to document behaviors he had never seen in Yellowstone. Donovan attributes these differences to the fact that Arctic wolves rarely experience negative encounters with humans or view them as a threat — it’s like going back to a time when humans learned from wolves and subsisted on the same prey…