"Sofía López Mañán: Are We Listening to Nature?"

[00:00:02] He would turn around and it would look at everybody. It's been like that every time they liberated. And when it is preparing to jump to fly, suddenly three or four condors appear from nowhere and they come to fetch him looking like ahhh. And then they disappear. It's an enormous bird. It's not like a very small bird. It's enormous birds. They appear from nowhere and they disappear to nowhere.

[00:00:32] And every time they were liberated, that thing happens. And you may say it's magic and it is magic. I do. I do want to see this world with magic. Greetings and welcome back to The Camera Cafe Show, the podcast where we brew up inspiration, creativity, stories and a fresh look at the world through the lens of today's most fascinating. Photographers.

[00:01:01] Today we're heading south all the way to Argentina for a conversation that's part photography, part philosophy and totally one of a kind. We talk with the amazing Sofía López Mañán, an Argentinian photographer, National Geographic Explorer and one of the 2024 Vital Impact Grants winners for her current project that is a work focused on bees in Argentina. We'll come to that in our talk. Sofia's approach to photography is anything but ordinary.

[00:01:31] Her projects from documenting the relocation of elephants from occlusing zoo in Buenos Aires to working with magnificent Andean condors to her multi-platform exploration of nature itself in her work El Libro de la Naturaliza, which go far beyond the camera. For Sofia, photography is a way to explore philosophy, rituals and her complex and sometimes broken relationship with the more-than-you-want world.

[00:01:59] In our conversation today we talk about being part of the story rather than just being an observer, how she builds deep connection with peoples and animals and why photography isn't about taking an image first, it's about listening. This one is less gear talk and more assault talk. A thoughtful, beautiful ride through the mind of a unique voice in documentary photography today.

[00:02:24] Welcome tonight on our podcast, Sofia from Buenos Aires in Argentina. It's a pleasure having you here and talk a bit about your photography tonight. Thank you very much, Tom. And I hope you're going to have a beautiful night. I'm sure we're going to have a wonderful discussion today. And as I know you a bit and you like to talk, Sofia, let's say if I make this secret sign, you stop talking. Yeah. Okay. Perfect.

[00:02:57] Last time we talked, you were going to do a project with honey. I wanted just to touch on it a bit. Really enjoy. I think photography, I'm going to jump to something else, but I do believe that photography just it's a means. I really enjoy investigating and learning. So learning about bees is nothing that I can do in a month or two. It's been like six months and I'm still learning a lot.

[00:03:24] So there I am trying to understand how bees work. And it's not only about bees. It's about how through beekeeping, we can have our, at least in Argentina, sovereignty, political, economical sovereignty. So it's really interesting. So I'm into it. Truly enjoy. I'm looking forward to it, to your next project.

[00:03:51] I know Sophie, you don't strictly define yourself as a photographer. I think you define or you use photography as a tool to communicate. How would you describe yourself? Oh, I live from my curiosities. I think I'm an artist. Sometimes photography just separates itself from the art. Like, no, I'm not art. I'm a photographer. No, it's art.

[00:04:21] It's a means of communicating. Photography has nothing to do with reality. Reality is a construction. So I do include photography as a means of communication, but I truly think it's more art. Hmm. For people just that are listening quick, you have been recognized internationally. You have received many international awards. You are, of course, a natural geographic explorer. You have been in galleries.

[00:04:50] You have been published in New York Times, Fyster, and so on and so more. If someone doesn't know you, Sophie, and he asks or she asks, what do you do? What's your most favorite way to answer the question? Today, I'm a storyteller and I work with environmental and social slash political conflicts in Argentina. Okay. And you work also...

[00:05:20] And I'm an artist. And I'm an artist as well. And then you try always to challenge the way how we see nature and conservation also. Absolutely. Absolutely. This was a very tricky question. Depends who asks. Some people want you to answer, I'm a documentarist. And I say, if you understand that way, I would say I'm a documentarist. No, I think I ask myself a lot of questions.

[00:05:48] I do work with storytelling. I do work with philosophy and ethology. And I storytell things related mostly with environmental things and problems and ideas we have. I'm a myth buster, I consider myself. Let's walk a bit back first, Sophie, so people get to know you.

[00:06:17] You studied fine art. You have a degree in fine art. And then you went on to study photography. Why? Yes. Oh, do you want the real question? The real answer? I don't know who's going to be listening. But when I started fine arts, obviously, my parents were very anxious about the idea. And once when I finished, they said, what are you going to do? Are you going to be a teacher, a school teacher?

[00:06:46] I was like, ah. So I said, maybe if I study photography, I could be a journalist. And then I went into journalism and I was like, nah, I'm not a journalist. But I did study because I thought that it was going to be a way out for living. Actually, it has become a way to live. But it hasn't been that easy as I dreamed it would be when I was a kid.

[00:07:13] I think you're clearly fascinating by learning, Sophie. You studied a lot of different things from art to anthrosology. Anthrosology, I'm still studying. It's the relationship between humans and non-humans. So it's actually understanding not the non-humans, not how you observe the non-humans.

[00:07:39] So it's a really interesting trans relationship or cross relationship study. So you have biologists working there, vets. It's really interesting. And where comes all this curiosity from? I think I've always been very curious. My obsession, I would say, beautiful obsession with understanding our relationship with the environment

[00:08:07] started when I was working at the zoo. I used to work at the Buenos Aires Zoo when it closed. The Buenos Aires Zoo, maybe five years ago, it closed up the doors. And they said, we're going to send all the animals to new places, different, free. And while I was working there, I received a lot of messages, people asking, where are they going to send the animals? Are they going to send them free? Are they going to free all the animals? And working with, whilst having all these messages and working with

[00:08:38] caregivers and biologists and vets and politics, all in the same area that is the zoo, I got really interested in how we observe the environment and how we construct ideas, how you construct ideas about it. So I don't know if it's very clear, but actually I started working, whilst I started working with things related to nature,

[00:09:07] I started studying how we observe and asking myself questions about how we observe nature. So there it comes, and triosology is one of my studies. And research is also a very important aspect of your creative process. How long you typically investigate a subject before creating your work, Sophie? Depends if I'm being hired.

[00:09:34] Depends if I'm being hired and they would ask something short, I would take a long time. So it's never short. And if I'm not hired and I'm doing it for myself, it takes decades. There's not a... I've noticed I never reached to an answer. I reached to more questions. So it's more like a process rather than projects that start and finish with an answer.

[00:10:01] Actually, the project with bees has been here for six months. I've been working for eight years with condors, and I'm still learning with that. Sometimes the project just says, go, I don't want you anymore. Continue with something else, and you keep on studying. But yeah, I do have a very strict research that can help me conceptualize images afterwards.

[00:10:30] I see you keep on talking about projects. So we are going to jump straight into the projects. And for everybody listening, of course, we cannot go over every project that Sophie does, but I urge you to check out her website. She has some amazing, amazing work. We will touch on two or three of them. The first one, let's do Mara, the elephant.

[00:10:53] So when the zoo closed, she was going to be transferred or she was transferred to a sanctuary in Brazil. How did you become involved in this, Sophie? Well, as I told you, I used to work at the zoo. And I've been there working for four years before Mara left. It's very important that Mara left in Pandemia, the beginnings of Pandemia,

[00:11:18] when everybody was very anxious about the idea of leaving our houses. And whilst my contract was finished, they considered I had a really nice and close relationship with veterinarians and all the team that was traveling. And they said, OK, we want you to go because we know that you can, you know how to work around others.

[00:11:43] And it is a very sensitive theme because everybody is very worried that the elephant does not die in the middle. So you have to know how to move yourself. That's why I went with them on the travels. Actually, I did two travels. I did it with Mara. And then one, you haven't seen, that was with Pochangicharmina, two more elephants. And once I did, the other was like, oh my God. But I forgot that it was so long, the trip.

[00:12:13] And so it hurts. Your body aches. I think it was the most intense trip. But I did it twice and I forgot the second time. Because we are talking how many days here? It is five days. But you travel to elephant speed. So it's 3,000 kilometers. And you go at 80 kilometers per hour with an elephant. That you stop when the elephant needs to stop.

[00:12:41] That would be when elephants need to be to eat or you need to clean up the space. So you don't have like, oh, we're going to stop at a hotel. If you stop at 5 in the morning and you leave at 7, you have two hours. You sleep in the car. When you can sleep in the car. And you go traveling at elephant speed. And this sanctuary, what I have to imagine by this, the one in Brazil.

[00:13:12] It's very interesting. I like it that we talk, it's more than photography. It's talk about what people are expecting to see. And what actually people see. So we talk about sanctuaries. I have always problems with the word sanctuary. Because we're imagining something like Buddha style, like free. Sanctuary is another kind of captivity. That it's better that it has animal welfare.

[00:13:39] That would be that elephants can do things that would be proper for their species. That would be like walking, grabbing leaves from the trees, grabbing grass from the floor, having their own time. That would be a sanctuary. Then they put the name sanctuary and people think they're free. No, they're not going to be free in Brazil. But they're kept in captivity because those elephants have lived most of their lives in captivity.

[00:14:07] So they do have like little things they have on their feet, problems with their feet. So they need some medical things. And they have close relationship with humans. They have always have closer relationship with humans. What a sanctuary actually adds as well is, in this case, in Latin America, is elephants having relationship with their own species. It wasn't there.

[00:14:35] In the United States, maybe a zoo would have like 30 elephants. In Latin America, if you had one elephant was enough, like, oh, you had one elephant. So it's that elephant couldn't relate with another from their species. So in this case, they do create groups. And I think that is the most important thing, to give them a proper life. Mm-hmm. And where you were traveling while transporting Mara, in another car behind?

[00:15:05] I would do the pictures once they said, okay, we're going to stop. We have to put some gas on. So it was very nice because the car with a truck with Mara would stop at the gas station. And people would be like, and even though you can't see the elephant, they wouldn't open the door. But people would take pictures of the cradle, of the big box, even though they wouldn't see the elephant inside.

[00:15:32] But there was an attraction just to know that there was an elephant inside. It was like, surely, what is it? The thing of the cat, the cat is inside the box. So you'd say, there's an elephant inside this box, even though you can't see it. People would take pictures of the box. So that was a time I would do pictures. It was when they would open the first little door where they would feed her or the back door where they would clean the space.

[00:16:02] Was there a particular moment, Sophie, in the trip that you remember very well? I do remember, I think, most of, mainly more about Mara. It was how you get transformed as a group with the other species. And you start the trip with all of your thinking and thoughts and anxieties.

[00:16:29] And then you remember, or you don't remember, you start like in a weird meditation when you're walking in an elephant space all the time. And you notice that everybody's here. It's for the elephant. No one is here for their own exhibition, their own ego. And you're just there as a group enjoying her traveling to a new space.

[00:16:56] I do remember from the three liberations I'm going to talk, I was there is when they've opened the door, the first relationship they had with their trunks and they would touch the soil. And I do remember the Germina, there was the other elephant that she lived in Mendoza. Mendoza is like a desert here. And she would live like in a space that it was three meters down.

[00:17:26] And when she was trying to go out and suddenly started raining, like poured rain. And she would take her head out. And she took like nine hours to get out of the cradle, no? But she would take the head out. And it was like pouring over her head. And she would grab like a piece of cane that was on the floor. And she would start playing with the water.

[00:17:52] And it was, I think she has never seen water like this. She's lived in the desert all of her life. And I do remember that moment. And I try to describe it. And I do remember that I see it. And so there is a moment when you notice and you think of yourself like, wow, they're discovering something new. So even though you're not an elephant, you can imagine yourself discovering something new.

[00:18:22] And that moment of terror and enthusiasm and terror and anxiety. And you're like, wow, I'm with you. I'm with you. And yes, it's been transforming, those moments. It's not about me. It's not about me. So that's the most important thing.

[00:18:42] I think we can talk then about what we discussed one day was that often people try to project human emotions onto animals. When do they not try to project human emotions on animals? People call my son to a dog. We treat our own dogs as little sons or daughters.

[00:19:07] We're always projecting our needs, our desires, our fantasies, our luck of love, our need to be recognized to the other. I really like that Scott. Scott is one of the owners of the elephant sanctuary. And he said, once Mara is out there, please don't call her. Don't say, Mara, Mara, look at me.

[00:19:35] And inside you're saying, you're craving like, recognize me. Look at me and notice that. Please forgive me. And it's always about me. And when he said, don't call her. Some people were actually like, what are you saying? And it's interesting.

[00:19:57] Once you're out there, even people that are listening to this, try to actually observe how you treat your own pets. And to see how much of us isn't there and how much we are projected, obviously. Why do you think we have this need to do this, Sophie? I like to say that Berger, I don't know if you pronounce it that way, that it's a philosopher.

[00:20:24] It's always about how we are looking to animals that are, that we look at them as, how do you call it, like humble. They are humble. They don't have any, any anger or envy. So we look at them to forgive us and to like us. To notice that we are, I think it's mostly about, it's not you forgive me. I want to know that I'm forgivable. I want to know that I'm lovable.

[00:20:54] I want to know that I'm okay. Like people, when they grab a dog, like, I want to touch it. No, don't touch it like that. Let's give the dog space for it to come to you. Nobody, they like, they need to love me. Well, we need to be loved, but this is not a psychology podcast, but we can talk, we can talk about this as well. Because from the other side, there's not going to be intense rejection. Of course. Except for cats. That's why people don't like cats.

[00:21:24] They say, cats, cats are weird. Yeah, cats are simple. They don't like you sometimes. I love cats. They have their own way of thinking. I do love cats. Cats are honest. And Mara, but she's okay now there? You have some kind of contact with them? I do have contact. Wow. Mara was amazing, the change she did.

[00:21:50] I think the first day she arrives, she started, because once you don't open the doors, they pop up the door. They start opening. You have to imagine yourself. It's like you're a plant. See, you start opening small doors until you get accustomed. So the first door, you settle down. The second, you open. And then you're going to have some elephants coming near you. So she would see them on the other side. You have to see. You don't know how she's going to react to the other. She's like basic on that.

[00:22:19] She doesn't have any social relationships or skills. So the second day, she started making all this humming. And she got together with this, with this elephant as if they knew all their lives. And they wouldn't stop touching themselves, like with their trunks and walking along and making all this rumbles all the time.

[00:22:47] And people would say, we've never heard those rumbles before. We've never seen elephant interact like that. Some people thought they knew themselves before when they had to come all the way from Hamburg. They came to Latin America back in the 70s. They say, maybe they shared sometime together. So Marta, not only she changed the color because elephants have the color of the soul they're with. So here in the zoo, she was gray and now she's red.

[00:23:16] But relationship or stress. Yeah, she's another elephant. Absolutely. She's an old elephant. She's like a grandma elephant. But she's a happy grandma elephant now. With all of her whining with her legs. But she has her own space and time. Wonderful to hear. If you send me some pictures, we will put them now for the YouTube version. Everybody can see them.

[00:23:45] Sophie, let's jump to the next animal and your next project, the bird king. What inspired you to start this project, Sophie? Oh, I love condors. I don't know if people are going to hear this. Condors are, it's the biggest flying bird you have. You're going to say the aluatros. Aluatros is wider. This is big and heavy. And it's rise really high.

[00:24:15] And it's for all Latin American communities. It's a sacred bird. And it's still a sacred bird. So we can relate with animals from biology. And yeah, you feel about our importance in this culture. In our culture. It sends our, guides our souls to heaven. It sends our prayers to heaven.

[00:24:38] And I started working with condors because I really loved working with the people with the condors. And I had the most weird and amazing things happening while working with condors. You can say it's spiritual. Yes, it's spiritual. But I think that's what makes sense when you work with a project. It's putting your, pouring your heart out.

[00:25:06] So I started working with condors and I've been there for eight years. I still consider myself working with condors and every time they need me. Because one doesn't divorce himself with themes. I'm still in touch with them. But I think I've learned a lot. Not only from them and observing them. But from the people that they give their lives for them.

[00:25:37] So it's been, it is amazing actually. What surprised you the most about these condors, Sophie? I don't know if it's because they are size. But when they're going to be liberated, they're liberated. Why are they going to be liberated? Maybe they fall because they've had some poisoning or that's another theme. Or because they have led some lead bullets.

[00:26:06] So they have to go to rehabilitation. Then they have to be liberated. And in each liberation, there is a ceremony that's going to be guided by the indigenous community that lives in that area. And you have this kennel that is this box where the condor comes in. You have to imagine it. It is one meter twenty. Maybe like this size. Big. Big. And it's two meters fifty wide. So this is the biggest condor.

[00:26:33] So when they have to, you have all this ceremony, they open the door. And you're like observing there. And it would come out and it would do like open the wings. And the fingers like that. It was not the fingers, it's the feathers like that. And he would turn or it would turn around. And it would look at everybody. It's been like that every time they liberated.

[00:26:56] And when it is preparing to jump to fly, suddenly three or four condors appear from nowhere. And they come to fetch Emmanuel looking like, ah. And then they disappear. And it's an enormous bird. It's not like a very small bird. It's enormous birds. They appear from nowhere and they disappear to nowhere.

[00:27:21] And every time they were liberated, that thing happened. And you may say it's magic and it is magic. I do want to see this world with magic. Biology obviously is a nice cosmovision. It's really important. But it's extra magic that I can't explain. And I've had so many dreams with condors.

[00:27:51] And one of them has changed actually liberation. It happened to me, it happened to a lot of people. Then you start thinking like, if you don't believe on this, it's weird. It's pure magic. Because in indigenous traditions, they see condors as sacred beings. Guides between worlds, I think. Did working on this project, Sophie, change you how you see them? Absolutely.

[00:28:20] I always start working more with biology. The nice thing about this project is that it's not only about conservation, but it's about culture. So you can't think about conservation if you don't think about culture. If you have a seed that's been extinct, and I give you back the seed, Tom, and I said, plant that seed. And if you don't use that seed, or that plant that is going to be out, it's going to be extinct as well.

[00:28:49] Again, so culture is very important because we need to think our relationship with those other beings. I would be animal plots, foggy, I care less. It's your relationship. And whilst working with those points of views together, biology and satellite things and GPS and radios and blah, blah, blah, and culture. And you can think indigenous, yes.

[00:29:17] But we as white people or European people, we need to create our cultural relationship as well. It's not about only indigenous people that depend on it. It's about us as well. That even though maybe I'm, Argentinos are mostly like mixed race because we're not Europeans. We're not sometimes we're, at least me, I'm not indigenous, but I'm not European. We're mixed race.

[00:29:42] It's crapping all these things and trying to create culture, including in culture. So I think that has changed some kind of my point of view on the way I actually work on projects. It's not about a bee now. It's about how we relate with a bee. Can we change our cultural relationship with bees? Can we see them differently? Can we be amazed?

[00:30:09] Can we see them differently?

[00:30:39] You learn it. I do make a project with photography or whatever, but you learn to honor. And that is, I don't know, what guides me a little bit. This project really has like two parts, no? Because we as in Western science, we analyze animals through biology. While indigenous cultures, for them, it's a part of a spiritual world.

[00:31:08] So in doing your project, you have to show both of these sides. You find this a fascinating part? Absolutely. I think, and again, I'm not saying I'm against times. I am a science person. But, there's a but. Science is a cosmovision. So when you see an animal, you measure the animal. You try to observe, but you're not part of it.

[00:31:36] Whilst you're always part of it, because you're observing from yourself, for where you are, from where you live. And other communities, they say, oh, I don't measure the amount. I don't know how much they weigh. I don't know a lot of things. But I do know because I observe. So I know where they go, how they go. So I think it's important to honor.

[00:32:04] You can understand a sunset, but if you start crying in a sunset, and you get emotional, that thing, it's not about science. I'm always fascinated by this picture of the girl in the laboratory, I think, with a little baby condor. And she's not showing herself. He's in a box. Talk me a bit about this. I find it very fascinating. Ah! No, but what you're talking here is mostly science.

[00:32:34] Condors, when they're born in captivity, when are they born in captivity? Sometimes you have a couple of condors in zoos that can't be liberated because of several reasons. They would have an egg, and sometimes they wouldn't take care of the egg, so the egg is raised and taken care of captivity. So when the condor is being born, you need to raise him or raise it without having human interaction.

[00:33:02] So what they do build are puppets, like female and father condor, so that the condor learns how to see a female condor and a father condor and not your hands. And why female and father? Because condors raise chicks. Both parents, they raise the same chicks. So one time a mother would feed them, the other a father would feed them.

[00:33:28] And that would be a way of taking care of the baby, whereas the chick in two months is like this size, like a big turkey with big legs. And the puppet would be like this small while the baby is enormous. And that would be having no imprinting, not human relationships.

[00:33:53] So the condor will relate a human only when they have to make medical things. So a human would get inside and get in touch with a condor when they have to grab him and put him something so that the condor wouldn't relate like humans are nice. No, you're not nice. You're a predator. So they need to understand that you're predators. We are not investigating a condor. We don't need them to like us. So, yes.

[00:34:22] So that's the way, that's why they're being born with puppets. Even also born, when they're born as well in captivity, they also use puppets. Which animal do you say, Sophie? The macaw. The macaw. That would be like a parrot, big parrot. Okay. Red parrot. Yeah, the macaws also use puppets to be fed. So avoiding imprinting. What's the closest you got yourself to a condor, Sophie?

[00:34:51] Well, to baby condors, I got as close as my computer. It would be like nothing, like 20 centimeters. The other day I was walking by, while I was down south, having hiking and a biggest condor. It wasn't an old condor, it was like a juvenile condor. Adolescent condor flew over me like two meters, like that.

[00:35:17] And you're between like, like happy and it's intense. It's a very big animal. And you have to imagine that their peaks, their beaks are so big and so strong that they could open leather. So it's not just like, oh, what's a nice little bird. You're like, have yourself. And they have really strong muscles in their necks because they have to go inside a dead

[00:35:46] body like, and open things up. So it's just, and I like them to be when they're old, two meters, it's a little bit too near, I think. Because you get a little bit like intimidated, I think. Do you have any idea how many condors are left in Argentina? Oh, no, I don't know. They're vulnerable.

[00:36:10] I think we did have in 2017, 18, we had really a massive condor death due to use of lead bullets and agrotoxics that are used to pet control that are used illegally here. It's legally legal. And in Argentina and in Chile, because you can't, they don't understand the country. So we do have one of the biggest condor community.

[00:36:39] Whilst in Venezuela, they're extinct. In Ecuador, there's only 100 left. In Peru and in Bolivia, they're more vulnerable. They're more really vulnerable. So here we do have stable and big communities. Even though there are maybe 4,000 condors, they would say like, huh? 4,000? Not so much, but that would be a stable group.

[00:37:08] And if you talk about lead bullets, Sophie, I suppose this is because farmers shoot animals and the condors eat these animals. Absolutely. Yes, it's not about because they're killing condors. It's because they're trying to control pumas. I think it's happening everywhere around that it's our relationship with the wildness. It's always complicated.

[00:37:32] And whilst we grow the borders of our, and we start having houses and pets and sheeps in the mountains, obviously you get out of pumas. So they're trying to control the pumas. So they kill them with lead bullets. And I think in Europe, they are forbidden the use of lead bullets. In Argentina, they're not yet. So it's a big problem.

[00:37:57] Because it's not only about condors eating the bullets, but most other animals that eat the dead animal, they would go through the same venom. Sophie, let's jump to the next. We will make this short, but I think it's your biggest project. El Libro de la Naturaleta. The Book of Nature. You spent many years working on this project. And I think it questions how we define as humans nature.

[00:38:27] Quick, what inspired you to start this? It was while I was working in the zoo. And I thought that, I have to be honest, when I was hired, I thought all the animals were going to leave at once, like a big Noah's Ark, like, okay, we're going to close the zoo. And we're going to send like this 2,000 animals in a month. And that doesn't happen.

[00:38:56] And people were very anxious to know, what are you going to do with the giraffes? What are you going to do with the elephants? You should send the elephants. I have a space here. You should send the elephant to my space. And I was, while I was understanding that it's not that easy to move an elephant around or move a zebra around or anything.

[00:39:23] It's what is our idea of nature? What is our idea of wilderness we have? That was the first project. Well, everybody's asking for freedom. Free? Are you going to free? Free? And it's, what do we have? Why are we talking all this time about freedom? Well, 10% of the whole world is actually free. That would be not intervened by human action. What is freedom?

[00:39:51] So I started first investigating that question. I started with that question. What is freedom? And while we're asking freedom is, what do people think when we say nature? And I've opened like a Pandora's box with that question. It wasn't that simple. So that's the project.

[00:40:17] That actually this year we're going to have a book coming out of this big, long study. Which places you visited for this project, Sophie? Actually, I haven't visited that much. That's a nice question. I did work with museums. And because I really enjoyed having this question being made by science.

[00:40:43] So I did work with some anthropologists, biologists and museums in Argentina. But mainly because my work was about how we construct nature. I considered that I had to construct that nature. So it's all about where I've been.

[00:41:07] If not, it's what have I created and what I have documented. I made a survey, very simple, asking the people to say, is this nature? Yes or no. Only three images. And I had like 40% of the answers said that nature is where humans are not there, where nature is not human intervened.

[00:41:35] So it's nature is different from humans. But then from the answers of their survey, they considered that a white baby would be less nature than an indigenous baby. That cows are more nature than the meat. That a chair, a wooden chair is not nature. So it's always about us in our relationship.

[00:42:03] So one more time, it's us fragmented from environments. So we are not part of, we are the bad people. We are the ones that we shouldn't be here. Like we are seeing the other through the eyes of guilt. And there was a philosopher that he would say, we're talking about climate change. And you think about climate change and you're not seeing it. You're not feeling it when you're not breathing.

[00:42:31] So it makes us separate. We have to think about climate change, but we don't feel ourself part. You just maybe you feel ourself part when you're having your neighbor's house being birds in Los Angeles, when you're having that terrible thing that happened down south in Spain, when you're having big fires in Greece. But if not, it's like climate change is an idea. It's nothing.

[00:43:01] It's not happening to my body. So it's fragments. So I think it's changing at least from our thoughts to responsibility. So you let me know when the book comes out? Absolutely. I think it's going to be in June. Very well. But I'll let you know. Sophie, if you go out to shoot pictures, you're the photographer that straight from the first day you make the pictures

[00:43:28] or you first talk with the people and see what is possible? I, that mostly depends on the time and what I have to do and for whom. But if I do have time, that's how I prefer working. And the classic that I will walk with my camera hanging rather than shooting. Because I believe that I don't, it's not about them trusting me, but I also need to trust.

[00:43:58] You need to create and build a relationship. Even though I'm very anxious and I want to do things from the first, but it's, I need to create a bond. I don't do the projects. Projects are built together. So it's, if people are confident that they feel safe and I feel safe and we feel enjoying creating, it's much better. Mainly because I truly enjoy staging images.

[00:44:29] So I need people to understand what I'm going to do and give me, giving me their, yeah. Okay. Do whatever he wants. Now, I think when you say this, you have to talk, you have to explain me again about the tiger on the bed. Oh, no, the tiger was different. I didn't have to explain. But that, that image was, I'm going to, I'm going to take fantasies out of the images now.

[00:44:55] Well, that was made at a zoo in Argentina that now closed, that they have a lot of tigers and lions. And the owner, he wanted to show me that the tiger was domesticated. So he brought Natalia, the name of the tiger. He brought Natalia into the house and Natalia was enormous. It was big. And he would take the, he would, okay, liberate Natalia throughout the house.

[00:45:24] And she would walk around and I would be like taking pictures. Something that usually happens while one is taking pictures is that when we are doing, I forget about everything. So that's not good. Sometimes I forget that I might be in danger. You're like there with the tiger sat over here, you're taking pictures. And Natalia would jump on the bed and he would feed her with chicken wings and checker feet.

[00:45:54] They're like, feed her all the time. And she, if she wanted to go on walking around, she would keep on walking. And there she was sitting, standing on the bed while she was being fed with chicken wings and grass. She was enjoying. Yes. You have an idea where she went after when the zoo closed? I think she's still there.

[00:46:22] It is, it is very complicated and very, very expensive to move animals around. Mainly if they're captive animals that they can't be liberated. You can't free a tiger. You can't free, I don't know, a lion. So you have to know in what other captive area they would go, but they're talking about 150.

[00:46:46] So it's always about, this is a very controversy talk because sometimes extreme biologists, they would say, would you spend millions and millions of dollars moving 150 tigers that are not going to be raised or bred? They're like dead for biology. Or are you going to spend millions of millions of dollars on tigers that you have free?

[00:47:16] Today you have more captive tigers than freed tigers. So there's always that controversy. But people enjoy animals with names. So you say it's Natalia. It's not any tiger, it's Natalia. What happens is there's not enough money to move 150 tigers and lions. So they're still there.

[00:47:43] I don't know in what stage they still are. And I think they were going to reopen that zoo because they need money coming out, coming in. So it's very complicated. What you can avoid is them having pups. But you're going to have tigers and lions for a while. And teaching people to see animals and standing inside a tiger like, ah, it's like the tiger king.

[00:48:12] He was like a tiger king from Latin America. He still is. So, yeah, it's controversial. Sophie. Yes. Let's jump a moment from photography to film. You completed your first documentary film, Kamatsu's Odyssey. Yes. How was this experience different from photography for you? It was terrible.

[00:48:40] It has been the most frustrating project I have done so far. What do you think? The nice thing about photography is that when you start in a story, I can give myself the opportunity to change my ideas while I'm working. Like, oh, I love you, Tom. The third day I say, I hate him, Tom. So, stories can change. My narrative can be built once I finish.

[00:49:08] And it can change all the time, the narrative. Well, film does not work this way. People know that. I knew that. But when I started working, I went with my heart. And this, I need to fall in love with a story while I'm making it. And no, documentary, most of the time, is have an idea. And you have to work over an idea. So, it has been frustrating because we built a project that when we had it,

[00:49:38] we saw it for the first time. It was horrible because we did it. We made this story. Most of the story is about Japanese migration into Argentina. So, we built this story about Japanese that had to live after the second world war, travel to Argentina, and all this. And we saw it with this, our Latin. We Latins, we enjoy trauma and very intense emotions.

[00:50:08] And Japanese people don't have that. So, once we made all this project up and we built it up, we have nothing of what we expected it to be. Actually, where we are, it's our own projections about what we think a Japanese should be. So, the story had to change.

[00:50:29] So, what did we do was how we observe a story about Japanese migration observed through the lens of two Latins. Actually, it was the most honest project I've done. Because everything that went wrong is in the project. And it's part of the project.

[00:50:53] So, that has been my first documentary film and I've learned a lot from it. And it did really good in festivals in Latin America. So, I think because it's a simple story and an honest story, it worked. And you see, as long as you learn new things, it's all good, Sophie. Absolutely. It's always about learning, no?

[00:51:21] You see how amazing our art form is. Yeah. We can do wonderful things. Absolutely. Sophie, I think I know the answer. But if you want to come back in the next life, which animal would you like to be? Ah, you're going to think a condor pet, no? No. No. I know what you're going to say. No. What am I going to say? What am I going to say? It lives in the sea. It has eight hours. I'm going to say a shark? No. No.

[00:51:51] An octopus. You're going to say octopus. Yes. Maybe you'd say an octopus. Maybe I want to be a very humble animal that nobody cares about. They're not important for us. And nobody cares less. Maybe I want to be that. I'm sure you will choose the octopus when it comes today. Maybe I do. I want to be important. Please give me the octopus. I do love octopuses, though.

[00:52:22] I do love octopuses, though. So if you were an artist or a storyteller or a researcher, what completely other different career would you love to try? I always thought I wanted to be a vet, but I would be crying all the time, like grabbing all the animals. Like, I would have been the best vet ever. No. Mountain guide. And if not, I want to be a, hopefully in the future, I would be a beekeeper. Sounds good.

[00:52:52] Yeah. I was imagining if you come home and you tell your parents, when I grow up, I'm going to be a mountain guide. Any reaction? My parents wanted to care of themselves all the time. Every time. When I was a kid, I told them, I want to go to Bolivia and go to this, I was maybe 18. I want to take care of these monkeys that live in the sanctuary. And my father was like, I'm going to take care.

[00:53:19] And my parents suffered so much with me. So much. Because all the time I was, I want to be master diver and work as sea dive, master diver, where I can just see it. I was like, stop it. Stop it with that. Stop it with the mountains. Do a career. Okay. Be an artist. So after that, they said, okay, we can't control you. Do whatever we want.

[00:53:47] At the same time, I've been doing, even though I'm not a dive master, I do dive and I truly enjoy diving. And I truly enjoy working in the mountains. So I've done myself that as a career. And even though I don't do money with that, I do that. So I think I do everything I enjoy.

[00:54:15] Sophie, to close this interview, what's the most funny moment you experienced ever while working on a project? I don't know if funny would be the story. It needs to be funny. It wasn't. It needs to be funny? Okay. Okay, bye. But now, it's funny comes with an anecdote. Anecdotes, not all the time are funny.

[00:54:41] But maybe it was two years ago, I went to work down south with the community that works the fishing, the artisanal fishing kind of thing. And what they do is that they fish, they dive down with a compressor. They have a boat, very old boat, very cold sea.

[00:55:05] And the guy would say, do you want to go down there and start harvesting some choli or how they call it? I'm like, yeah, okay. Because I'm a little bit unconscious, they would put all the things up. And he would say, okay, stop breathing. If you smell something weird, don't worry, don't worry. Nothing's going to happen to you. And when I was going to jump, a whale comes along. Big, enormous whale. And he said, you jump along, nothing's going to happen.

[00:55:35] So I jumped. And I was like, with this little tube hose towards the boat. And the guy, when I was there, like breathing and looking down and maybe anxious. Unconscious. And he said, okay, when you go down, it's like 15, 20 meters. Nothing is going to happen. But if it does, you just have to let yourself go because maybe a whale comes along and it would grab your hose off. So you just have to let yourself go.

[00:56:04] And you're like, and when I was going down, obviously unconscious, nothing happened. And my friend, the journalist that was up there, she was given like a little knife. Just, just cut her off. If, if you see that the whales come along. So I mean, it wasn't the most funny. It was weird, hilarious moments.

[00:56:27] I do have all the images of the, of the other at the, at the knife of the whales coming along. So, yeah. Sometimes working like this has weird, absurd anecdotes. Like running in the middle of nowhere. And they say, stop running because jaguars, it's jaguar time. And you're a meat for them and you're running. Yeah.

[00:56:57] So I do have several anecdotes related to that. Yeah. I could write a book about it. I think we should have a coffee or a beer someday. And you. Absolutely. You tell me your best. And I go. Sophie, thank you so much for this very interesting talk. I love your energy. I'm disappointed you don't want to be the octopus, but we talked about photography. We talked about nature.

[00:57:25] We talked about human relations. Thank you for coming on the podcast. And we keep in touch and are looking forward to see the book and your next project about honey. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, everybody that's going to be listening. And I do think you want to be the octopus. Yeah, just made a projection. I know. I know. I see you. I see you around, Sophie. Take very good care. Okay. Thank you so much. I see you. Bye.

[00:57:55] I see you. Bye-bye. Bye. And that brings us to the end of this conversation with Sofia Lopez-Mañán, a true artist, explorer and observer of nature in the sacred of everyday. Her work reminds us that the world isn't something to be captured, it's something to be in conversation with. From bees to elephants to condors and ritual in the forest, Sofia invites us to see photography as a slow, respectful way of learning to pay attention.

[00:58:24] If this episode resonated with you, folks, be sure to check out the show notes where you will find links to her projects and watch the work with bees she's doing right now through her Vital Impact Grant on her Instagram feed. And of course, if you haven't already, give us a follow, leave a review or subscribe to the podcast. It helps us bring more stories out like this to your ears. Until next time, thanks for tuning in. Keep your eyes open, your camera ready and as always, start moving your own photography.

[00:58:53] I'll see you next time for another wonderful talk with another wonderful photographer. Adios.