HELLE AND URI LØVEVILD GOLMAN

Graeme Green catches up with wildlife photographers Helle and Uri Løvevild Golman to discuss their latest project, wildlife conservation, and overcoming a life-changing attack

Pink flamingos Project WILD involved photographing and documenting many species from all around the world, across all seven continents – a huge undertaking

When a tragedy happens, there are two options: to let it destroy you, or to try to find any positives and forge a hopeful way forward. Wildlife photographers Helle and Uri Løvevild Golman have chosen hope.

While working on a documentary about critically endangered lowland gorillas and forest elephants in Gabon in 2017, Uri was attacked at a local market by a suspected poacher from Boko Haram, armed with a knife. In the following fight for their lives, Uri received serious injuries to his heart, liver and a major artery. During heart surgery at a Gabon hospital, he clinically died for two minutes. It took a month before he could even speak.

Left with brain damage, caused by the loss of blood, Uri is now, after years of intense rehabilitation, able to speak, swallow, move his arms, and walk with support. Talking to Helle and Uri via Zoom at their home in Denmark, he even manages a lion’s roar.

Helle is Danish, Uri originally from Israel. Both are National Geographic photographers and explorers, and Canon ambassadors. Gabon was the 25th expedition in their Project WILD: 25 wildlife photography expeditions in five years across seven continents. Photos from their expeditions, from Greenland to Kenya, are brought together in their new book WILD.