Rob Badger and Nita Winter’s Artist Statement  Written by Rob Badger 

Nita Winter, my work and life partner, and I are both professional fine art and conservation photographers, and climate activists. We seek, deeply embrace, and revel in the positive, esthetic emotions we feel when we experience beauty. Although, as artists, we are truly fascinated by how it expresses its joyful, magnetic energy in an infinite and endless variety of forms, we are most powerfully drawn to the sources of that beautiful energy still surviving in the natural world.

We take great pleasure in using all our senses to be physically and emotionally present, and connected to the land and climate that nurtures Life and creates the precise conditions for its inhabitants to thrive, and to pass their unique individuality and vitality on to future generations. Through our documentary art we are able to hold, interpret and offer what we have seen and felt, intimate moments of discovery, wonder, and appreciation, and truly profound gratitude, for what Nature has given us to enjoy and protect.

Because powerful, engaging images can create a compelling visual message, we use our art to tell a photographic story, and color it with the emotions and tones that are a voice for the land, and the Life that is vulnerable and voiceless. Our art is intended to elicit positive esthetic emotions in others, strong feelings that will heighten their awareness and appreciation of Nature’s beauty, and inspire hope and action to value and protect it.

For the past 30 years, Nita and I have primarily focused on artistically documenting the magnificent diversity of native wildflowers on our Western public lands. Using only natural light, we carefully photograph individual wildflowers in the field, and we have been most fortunate to experience and document many dazzling superbloom landscapes.

Our work has evolved to become the documentary art project “Beauty and the Beast: California Wildflowers and Climate Change,” a growing body of images intended to inspire hope and action regarding climate change, land conservation and species extinction. The project includes a traveling, educational exhibit (see by over 60,000 people to date) and a companion, 12 time award-winning coffee table book. The book includes 18 engaging stories by passionate scientists, environmental leaders and nature writers that tell the wildflowers’ story. The book’s website is wildflowerbooks.com.

During the seasons when wildflowers are scarce, Nita and I enjoy photographing migratory birds that overwinter in wildlife refuges in California and the Southwest to feed and escape the cold. Images, printed on fine art paper, aluminum or wall fabrications, capture the birds in a moment of time, protected in the landscapes that sustain them.

“Supergraphic” reproductions of our work have been commissioned for architectural installations in public spaces. These large scale images are intended to give viewers a feeling that they can almost walk into them, immerse themselves in Nature’s beauty and linger there for a while. Therefore, we feel most fortunate that our work is used to help create peaceful and healing environments.

We are grateful, and truly in awe, when we see how printing technology has advanced, and allowed our work to be presented clearly and beautifully, on such a grand scale. For example, 24 of our images, some up to 12 feet tall, were built into the architecture of Sutter Van Ness Hospital in San Francisco. In Kaiser’s Redwood City Medical Center 34 images enhance the hospital’s environment. As patients, staff and visitors leave the elevators, on one of the seven different floors, they are greeted, by 8 feet tall, 20 feet wide Bay Area wildflower and foliage abstracts brilliantly printed on translucent lobby dividers.

We use our art to promote the healing process, on any and all levels possible, for both humans and the rest of the natural world. Our imagery connects us to Nature’s beauty that we have inherited, and is intended to inspire others to join us in protecting and restoring it.

To see more of Rob Badger and Nita Winter’s images and learn more about them, please visit WinterBadger.com, shop.winterbadger.com and wildflowerbooks.com.