| An Honorary Member is a photographer who is either deceased or retired, whose contributions to the understanding of the natural world helped to blaze the way for the discipline of conservation photography. The following people were nominated by ILCP members and approved by the Executive Committee.
Peter was born in Germany of Latvian parents in 1945 and emigrated to Australia in 1950. He died doing what he loved best in 1996 in southwest Tasmania.
Peter began taking photographs in the 1960s and was strongly influenced by
Lithuanian-Australian pioneer conservationist and photographer Olegas
Truchanas, another outstanding conservation photographer. He was equally influenced by American landscape
photographers such as Ansel Adams, Edward and Brett Weston and Elliot
Porter.
Peter was an conservationist with a deep love of
Tasmania, and his photographs were instrumental in the conservation of
Tasmanian wild places, including the prevention of the damming of the
Franklin River.
He died in 1996 while photographing in the
Western Arthur Range in southwest Tasmania. In 2003 he was inducted
into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum - the first
Australian to be accorded this honour.
Peter's work is
represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, the
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the Australian Heritage Commission
and in private collections. His photographs continue to be published by
his wife through West Wind Press, in the form of books, calendars,
cards and posters.
During the creation of the ILCP in Anchorage, Alaska, the founding members granted Peter Dombrosvskis honorary membership for his contributions to conservation photography.
Born in Oakland, California in 1940 to a college professor and a concert cellist, Galen was introduced to wilderness before he could walk. He began climbing mountains at the age of ten on Sierra Club outings, and at sixteen made his first roped climbs in Yosemite Valley. Over the next fifteen years he logged more than a hundred first ascents of new routes there and in the High Sierra backcountry. Taking photographs began as a way to share his high and wild world with friends and family. In 1972 he became a full-time photographer after selling a small automotive business. Less than a year later he did his first major magazine assignment–a cover story for National Geographic.
Galen pioneered a special brand of participatory wilderness photography in which the photographer transcends being an observer with a camera to become an active participant in the image being photographed. His emotional connection to his subject matter came across clearly in his early mountain climbing photographs that first drew public recognition, but his landscape imagery, often made on the same adventures, has proven even more evocative because of the visual power he created from what he described as “a continuing pursuit in which the art becomes the adventure, and vice-versa.” In 1984 he received the Ansel Adams Award for his contributions to the art of wilderness photography. In 1992 Galen received a National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Grant to photograph Antarctica.
According to The Washington Post, “Galen Rowell may be the foremost practitioner of that hybrid art, photojournalism.” With the mobility permitted by Nikon 35mm equipment, he turned his own active participation into a hidden fourth dimension that made his work come alive. No scene was taken for granted; the principles of action photography were applied to his landscapes and vice versa. His favorite landscapes feature unexpected convergence of light and form, seemingly unrepeatable moments captured by combining imagination and action with a clear understanding of outdoor optical phenomena. His quest for these “dynamic landscapes,” as he called them, is documented in his classic 1986 bestseller, Mountain Light: In Search of the Dynamic Landscape. During his lifetime, Galen produced seventeen other books, including In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods, Bay Area Wild, North America the Beautiful, and Galen Rowell’s Inner Game of Outdoor Photography. Galen Rowell: A Retrospective, a major overview of Galen’s life with essays by luminaries from the various worlds he influenced, from environmental conservation to humanitarianism, from mountaineering to fine art, was published by Sierra Club Books in 2006.
In the last twenty years of his life, Galen made over forty journeys to the mountains of Nepal, India, Pakistan, China, Tibet, Africa, Alaska, Canada, Siberia, New Zealand, Norway, and Patagonia. Besides participating on major expeditions to Mount Everest, K2 and Gasherbrum II (not to the summit), he made the first one-day ascents of Mount McKinley in Alaska and Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa as well as first ascents of Himalayan peaks such as Cholatse and the Great Trango Tower. He also made the highest complete ascent and descent of a mountain on skis on Mustagh Ata (24,757 feet), as well as a 285-mile winter traverse of the Karakoram Himalaya.
When not doing assignments for Life, National Geographic, Outdoor Photographer, or other publications, Rowell was likely to be found either writing at his Berkeley or Bishop homes, climbing in the High Sierra, working at Mountain Light Gallery or hiking and photographing with his wife Barbara.
Philip Hyde helped lead in the establishment of color landscape photography as a fine art. He influenced the direction of nature photography as he participated in more environmental campaigns than any other photographer of his time. He contributed to the birth of the modern environmental movement as one of the primary illustrators of the groundbreaking Sierra Club Exhibit Format Series. His photographs helped protect scenic wild lands such as Dinosaur National Monument, The Grand Canyon, The Redwoods, Canyonlands and many other national parks, seashores and wilderness areas.
American Photo Magazine named Hyde’s photograph, “Cathedral In The Desert, Glen Canyon, Utah, 1964” one of the top 100 photographs of the century. A New West Magazine story said that his work influenced a generation of photographers. Several Outdoor Photographer articles have named him as one of a handful of the top “Landscape Masters.”
Born and raised in San Francisco, Hyde lived for 50 years in the house he built in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California with his late wife Ardis. Ardis worked at the California School of Fine Arts where Hyde studied under Ansel Adams, Minor White, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Lisette Model and Dorothea Lange. Ardis also supported Hyde’s early career by teaching kindergarten for 12 years and assisting in the photography business. She was acclaimed for her knowledge of birds, plants and organic gardening.
Hyde’s work has appeared in more than 75 books and 100 major publications including The New York Times, Audubon, Life, National Geographic, Aperture, and Newsweek. His work has been exhibited in over 100 of the finest venues including The Smithsonian Institute, Time-Life Gallery, Ansel Adams Gallery, George Eastman House, California Academy of Sciences, Center for Creative Photography, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Sierra Club Gallery, New York City. The North American Nature Photography Association honored him with a lifetime achievement award in 1996. He received the California Conservation Council’s Merit Award in 1962 and the Albert Bender Grant in 1956.
After losing his eyesight in 2000, he relied on dreams for glimpses of the natural world he spent a lifetime defending. His son David, who walked many wilderness miles with his parents, continues to involve the now historically significant photographs in conservation efforts. A portion of proceeds from fine print sales goes toward clean energy research. David, whose articles have been nationally syndicated, is writing a memoir about his family based partly on 56 years of wilderness trip logs written by Ardis.
Michio Hoshino, a native of Japan, spent the summer of 1973 with an Inuit family in Shishmaref, Alaska. He moved to Alaska permanently in 1978. His 19-year photographic journey included the publication of Grizzly, an award-winning book published in 1986 by Chronicle. On August 6, 1996, at the age of 44, Hoshino was killed by a brown bear while asleep in his tent in Kamchatka, eastern Russia. Fifteen of his photography and essay collections were published in his lifetime.
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