Oriol Alamany: "I have photographed many places that no longer exist."

Oriol Alamany (1958) has traveled across Arctic landscapes, mountains, and deserts around the world to photograph the wildest nature, often in extreme conditions. His work, which has helped to describe the lives of animals such as the snow leopard, the Etosha elephant, the brown bear, and urban falcons, has been published in prestigious magazines such as National Geographic and BBC Wildlife.

You started studying biology.

— Yes, two years. But then Franco died, and classes stopped. One day far-right groups came in with clubs and chains, the next there was a teachers' strike... I passed botany on the first try, but I failed all the other subjects, and I started studying design.

And from design to photography.

— They say my photographs have a lot of composition, maybe that has something to do with it. There is a type of nature photographer, portraitists, we call them, who value close-ups: what matters is that the animal appears as large as possible. But I think you could do that without leaving the zoo. I like to photograph them with other elements of their natural environment.

Do you have the feeling that you are photographing things that will soon disappear?

— Especially landscapes. I have many photographs of places that no longer exist. Not far away: lost villages in the Pyrenees, owned by four farmers, where there are now apartment blocks.

And what about animals?

— In recent decades, many efforts have been made to conserve emblematic species such as bears, vultures, eagles, wolves, and lynxes. But, on the other hand, many insects and small agricultural birds are disappearing because they're not as conspicuous and no one cares about them. I'm planning to do a project on this; it should show how pesticides are used or how roadsides, where there was so much biodiversity, are cleaned.

One of your most famous works is that of the Himalayan snow leopard.

— Yes, it's funny because we were convinced we wouldn't see any, and on the first day we were looking for them, two appeared at once. I started shivering, I don't know if it was from the cold, because the sun had set and the temperature had dropped significantly, or from nerves. I took ten photos of one of the leopards, turned around, and ten of the other. Afterward, we went for many days without seeing one: over time, I've learned that nature is absolutely unpredictable.

Because the danger of returning from a trip like this empty-handed is always there.

— When I was young, I was incredibly frustrated after investing time in something and seeing no personal or financial return, because, of course, you came back with no material to offer. But nature doesn't understand immediacy. It's all about patience. And I have the feeling that when you try, failure after failure, nature eventually rewards you. Other times, yes, you spend eight hours staring at a cliff and nothing happens: bad luck.

Not everyone has that patience.

— There are people who sign up for a safari and go with a list of all the things they want to see; the lions, the tigers, the river crossing of the wildebeest herds, the zebras... because they have seen it in the National GeographicThese documentaries bring together the work of hundreds of professionals over thousands of weeks of work, and they want to see it all in seven days because that's what they paid for.

They want to avoid waiting hours, which I assume is a lot for a professional. How do you deal with it?

— When you photograph wildlife, if you get distracted, you're lost. You have to be scanning the horizon continuously, for hours on end. You get into standby...Although with birds, for example, I rely heavily on hearing. I know their sound very well, even their flapping.

You've worked a lot in the desert and the Arctic. Why?

— They are primeval, open spaces, with very good lighting, especially at dawn and at night. I greatly admire my colleagues who take photos in the jungle, because they are very enclosed spaces where the light is often dire and there is a lot of vegetation. In the desert, there are fewer animals, but those that are there are easier to see. Ultimately, there are fewer wild places in the world than people think. And I've also seen remote areas, in Africa, for example, where the land has been destroyed; there are hardly any animals because people are starving and poaching is widespread.

How much time do you spend at home and how much time do you spend traveling?

— We used to take one long trip a year, lasting three months. Now, we also organize photography trips for groups of ten or twelve people to places like the Svalbard Islands, India, Morocco, Jordan, Patagonia, Australia, Oman... And we're only in Barcelona for two months at a time.

You always speak in plural...

— Yes, because I travel with my partner, Eulàlia, on all my trips. She doesn't take photos, but she's a genius at organizing everything else. I don't know if I could go to certain places alone anymore, because when one gets scared, the other one takes care of it, and vice versa.

Do you mean you were scared while taking pictures?

— Well, I've often had to work in extreme temperatures, and I've reached some peaks in tears because I felt so ill and we couldn't turn back. In Yemen, we boarded a plane escorted by the army. In Egypt, I was photographing a desert bird, not realizing there was a military camp behind it, and a young soldier, who was very nervous, snatched the film from me, pointing a machine gun at me. He told me they would develop it and, depending on what they found, they wouldn't let me leave the country.

With artificial intelligence, it's no longer easy to tell which photos are real and which aren't.

— For me, sitting in front of the computer and asking it to draw me a lion sitting on a dry branch in a ray of afternoon light doesn't really do anything for me. I understand it could be useful, but personally, it's nothing like sitting in a 35-degree Land Rover sweating profusely trying to find an animal.