Jacques Renaud has always been a photographer. He started out in the calanques and mountains of Provence in his youth. Then, as soon as his career as a lawyer gave him the means, he began travelling the planet. His quest: to capture images of the largest mammals, from African big cats to the great apes of Borneo.
But it is for bears of every kind — polar bears in northern Canada, brown bears in Kamchatka — that he holds a particular fondness. “I first went to Kamchatka more than twenty years ago, shortly after the borders opened. Under the USSR, the peninsula was a military base, impossible to access. As soon as the borders opened, I rushed there,” Jacques recalls.
There, it was a shock — volcanic, lunar landscapes and blood-red rivers. “The colour of thousands upon thousands of red salmon migrating in from the sea. It makes for striking photographs!” he continues.
It was during this period that he first encountered brown bears. Jacques Renaud had the good fortune, at the time, to approach the bears alongside Vitali Nicolaienko, one of Russia’s foremost experts on large mammals. Since then, tourism has developed — a little. When Jacques returned to the peninsula in 2016 with Étendues Sauvages, travelling with Rémy Marion, “the safety conditions were ideal, nothing like what they were back in the 1990s.” Jacques was able to photograph the brown bears in extraordinary conditions. “We were surrounded by bears, ten or fifteen metres away. They were fishing for salmon, paying us no mind at all. One day, we even watched a mother with four cubs, full and sated, sitting calmly watching us while her cubs played around her. Even Rémy was astonished — mothers rarely have four cubs. Our cameras were firing away like mad!”
Emerging from the dens
Jacques Renaud also saw bear cubs in Canada, in Inuit country, in Nunavut — again with Étendues Sauvages. There, he lived out a childhood dream: capturing cubs as they emerged from their dens at the first signs of spring.
Capturing this moment is partly a matter of chance: finding a bear den is not exactly within everyone’s reach. “It was the Cree running our lodge — former hunters turned to tourism — who put us on the right track,” Jacques recounts. The rest is almost impossible to put into words: the photographer’s heart leaping with joy at the sight of the cubs tumbling about, the sheer exhilaration of knowing he was witnessing an extraordinary scene. “It was -40°C with the wind chill. Our cameras were firing away like mad, while the two cubs — one fairly calm, the other every bit as excited as we were — tussled beneath their mother,” Jacques recalls.
When he is not at the far ends of the earth, and not representing his clients in court, Jacques enjoys sharing his passion for animals with younger generations. He supports the collective Géniale Nature, whose aim is to involve young people in protecting nature. “Some of my photographs are online on their site. It’s a pleasure to share my sense of wonder with children.”
Thank you, and bravo!
Conversation with Karine Welter, for Magazine Expérience #07, March 2017.
