JACQUES MARIE MAGE PROUDLY PRESENTS THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF RONAN DONOVAN
As the exhibit’s lead patron, Jacques Marie Mage proudly invites you to “Wolves: Photography by Ronan Donovan, “Wolves: Photography by Ronan Donovan,” a traveling photography exhibit created by National Geographic Society and the National Museum of Wildlife Art, available for viewing at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County through June 22, 2025.
Wolves reveals National Geographic explorer, wildlife biologist, and conservation photographer Ronan Donovan’s stunning images and videos that highlight the contrast between wolves living in perceived competition with humans within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and those living without human intervention on Ellesmere Island in the high Canadian Arctic.
A field biologist turned conservation photographer and filmmaker, Donovan's passion for wild animals and wild places was ignited as a wildlife field biologist researching spotted owls and chimpanzees. He transitioned to visual storytelling as a way to amplify the work of wildlife researchers and conservationists, striving to reconnect viewers to the natural world through the lives of social mammals to highlight our shared past and interwoven future.
Since 2014, Donovan has examined the relationship between wild wolves and humans in order to better understand the animals, our shared history, and what drives persistent human-wolf conflict. The visuals presented throughout Wolves were captured from Donovan’s National Geographic Society-funded work and featured in National Geographic magazine’s 2016 Yellowstone issue and September 2019 issue, as well as the National Geographic WILD series Kingdom of the White Wolf in 2019.
“Wolves are such a fascinating animal to me because of how complex their relationship is with humans,” Donovan says. “Wolves were the first animals humans domesticated some 30,000 years ago, and they have lived alongside us ever since as guardians, workers, and companions. Yet as humans moved to more sedentary lives, raising what amounts to easy prey in the form of livestock, wolves have found themselves in conflict with humans.”
The exhibition reveals, with astonishing intimacy, how the Arctic wolves hunt, play, travel, rest, and raise their young in one of the harshest environments on Earth. By contrast, their brethren in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are fearful of humans, making it nearly impossible to document intimate details of their daily lives.
“The comparison between the two populations offers a contrasted view of wolves,” noted Donovan in a recent Instagram post, “one that is subject to heavy modern human management, and one that offers a sense of stepping back in time to when humans first began to consider wolves as a valuable companion.”
Visit nhmlac.org for more information on Wolves: Photography by Ronan Donovan.