Award-winning photographic book shakes us awake

Sacred Nature Volume II: Reconnecting People to our Planet ★★★★
Jonathan and Angela Scott
HPH Publishing

“Yoh.” If one word was to describe award-winning wildlife photographers Jonathan and Angela Scott’s recognition of the natural world — and the necessity of humankind sharing a symbiotic relationship with our planet — this would be it.

Otherworldly aerial photos of Sossusvlei's salt pans, emperor penguins huddled in the foreground of a sublime Arctic glacier, stark black-and-white images of the jagged, impenetrable Himalayas: the Scotts' have traversed the continents for decades capturing the natural world and human interaction with the biosphere.

This Taschen-esque coffee table book is interspersed by the odd verging-on-pretentious quotes pertaining to nature (including one à la Eckhart Tolle...) yet the pages dedicated to the Scotts' acknowledgment of the necessity to preserve biodiversity compensates for a potentially live-love-laugh approach to Gaia.

Writing with candour about the Anthropocene, climate crises, and the detrimental effect human rapaciousness has on our planet, Sacred Nature Volume II is an awe-inspiring visual homage to our planet inasmuch as a reminder that if we don’t act soon “sacred” will be replaced with “desecrated”.