Eleanor Briggs, with an anteater named “Lisa.”
Over the last three decades, award-winning photographer Eleanor Briggs has had her work shown in museums and galleries throughout the Northeast. Her photographs have appeared in national magazines and in books, and her work hangs in the American Embassies in Phnom Penh (Cambodia) and Lima (Peru). She was awarded the Sahametrei Medal by the Government of Cambodia for her conservation efforts and book on that country.
Since 1989, she has worked mostly in Southeast Asia and India photographing people, nature, and birds. In her capacity as a field researcher for the International Crane Foundation and then as Conservation Associate and board member of the Wildlife Conservation Society, she spent many months photographing wildlife and wildlife habitat in the outer reaches of Bhutan, Bolivia, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, India, and Nepal. On these travels, Eleanor has learned that the conservation of wildlife is actually about people: only by respecting local culture and listening carefully to local people can we help them protect animals and the habitats they need to live.
Reflections on Moose Brook
A selection from Eleanor Briggs’ Moose Brook series, on display in the Thelma Babbitt Room at the Harris Center from September 30 through October 30, 2019. (photo © Eleanor Briggs)
Her Harris Center exhibit — which runs from September 30 through October 30, 2019 in the Thelma Babbitt Room — focuses on photographs shot a little closer to home in Hancock, NH. She explains:
Moose Brook is a stream that flows out of Norway Pond, away from downtown Hancock. Five years ago, a friend said to me, “You gotta see this place!” and we set out at dawn in kayaks. I’ve been paddling down this brook every summer since. I even lost a camera to it, capsizing while leaning over to get the perfect water lily shot.
Leaving the village behind, one glides silently into another world. Here water lilies open quietly, spider webs shimmer on arching grasses, pickerel weed casts a perfect reflection in the glassy water.
Here is a pristine world of ever-changing equivocal visual planes and spatial mysteries, an endless inspiration for a photographer, a magical and sacred place.
