Claudio Contreras Koob

Living in one of the biggest cities in the world I anxiously awaited every time vacations were coming to be able to hit the road with my parents and visit the many wonders my country has to offer.

Photography became the natural thing to do, I started working in Mexicos Natural Protected Areas, many of them unknown to people and protected only in documents.

Mexico is the fourth most diverse country in the world, sadly there are but a few people in my country that appreciate this gift and are aware of the responsibility it entails, my goal became and still is to try to fill the void with my images of the knowledge that Mexicans have towards their natural heritage. Since then approximately 15 years have passed and I keep on working in association with the Government and local NGOs.

Currently I have been working on a couple of projects together with the National Ecology Institute of Mexico. I have finished a portfolio of the Guadalupe Island Biosphere Reserve, located 225 kilometers off the coast of Baja California, an Island once depleted by goats that is coming back to life with lots of endemic flora thanks to the hard work of the Island Conservation Ecology Group staff, who have managed to eradicate the goats from the Island.

At the moment I am also working a very interesting project in the Marias Island Chain Biosphere Reserve, located in the mouth of the Californian Gulf. The principal island of the Marias Island Chain is a penal facility with world recognition since it is an open doors prison where inmates are able to live with their families, this results in a high proportion of inmate re-adaptation into society.

Our work there deals in part with knowing to what instance the islands have been impacted by the penal facility and to try to make this prison a role model of environmentally sustainable penal facility.

As years pass I still feel that the most satisfying part for me is the time I'm able to be out there alone having the privilege of being invited with some unspoken language by wildlife to calmly sit down next to them and observe them, its a profound moment of reflection that makes me feel we are in communion.

I intend to keep on working in Mexico in the foreseeable future, there is simply too much to be lost out here, and unfortunately not many photographers to cover all the biodiversity and problems our environment faces.