Mother: A Tribute to Mother Earth

Marsel van Oosten has been described as the only photographer to have completed the grand slam of nature photography: Wildlife Photographer of the Year, International Nature Photographer of the Year, and Travel Photographer of the Year. That framing risks making him sound like a competition specialist. His photographs are exercises in restraint.

The compositions in Mother are minimalist to the point of austerity: one subject, simplified background, nothing competing for attention. An elephant at the edge of a water source. A single tree in grassland. A waterfall with nothing else in the frame. The book gathers 200 images across 320 pages, beginning in Africa, where van Oosten is based in Knysna, South Africa, and extending across all seven continents.

The book mixes colour and black-and-white within the same sequence. The colour work tends toward desaturated earth tones; the monochrome images are occasionally the stronger ones. Whether that interweaving reads as a formal decision or a distraction will depend on the reader, but the book is consistent enough in its restraint that the shifts rarely jar.

The title positions this as environmental in intent, and a share of proceeds goes to the Canopy Project, a tree-planting initiative. Van Oosten does not photograph spectacle. The subjects are often solitary, still, shot in available light. The quietness is deliberate.

Published bilingual in English and German, reflecting teNeues's heritage as a German publisher. For UK readers, the English text reads cleanly throughout. At 36 centimetres tall, this is among the larger format nature photography books published in 2024. The weight, unconfirmed in available sources, is likely above 3kg given the page count and stock.