GEAR & REVIEWS

It could be the most anticipated fish book for 2020. Nathan Hill pins down author and photographer Ivan Mikolji to find out what’s going down in his latest project.

GEAR BOOK FOCUS

FOREWORD: I was invited to write the foreword for this book, and now I’m writing the foreword to the interview of the book with my foreword. Strange times.

Before the UK lockdown began, Venezuelan explorer, author, photographer, videographer, PFK contributor and conservationist Ivan Mikolji approached me, excited yet tentative. He wanted to show me the copy for a book he had been secretly working on, which was near complete. As I recall, he wanted to test the water with help to find a publisher, as well as to see if I could invest some time proof reading.

When I opened it up — a simple enough document with minimal but compelling copy and bedecked with Ivan’s signature images — I was, I’m not ashamed to say, poleaxed.

I thought I had already seen Ivan’s best work through the features he had created for this very magazine.

The reality was that I’d barely scuffed his considerable portfolio, and now I was exposed to it all.

I witnessed images of fish I’d never seen before, and not just a few.

Ivan’s collection, compiled through the course of his professional life, is more than other folks would take five lifetimes to amass. Even better, Ivan’s obsessive-compulsive diligence means that for every photograph comes reams of data.

Whatever he could record at the time — location, temperature, sympatric species, camera settings — can all be embedded next to every image.

SHUTTERSTOCK

I couldn’t find Ivan a publisher, and I was too busy to proof read, so I advised on the folks I trusted to help, and sent him on his way.