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The Early Bear
Cub bears and their mother, Greenland, 2024
Category - Polar Regions
Two cub bears follow in their mother’s tracks, imitating her skills. Each journey is an opportunity for her to prepare them to adapt, on their own, to this extreme, unpredictable, and often hostile environment. This image reveals the crucial role of the mother in polar bears (Ursus maritimus), who raise their cubs alone for 18 to 30 months: day after day, the cubs learn to become independent, to understand their territory, and to survive in it.
In the photograph, the three silhouettes respond to one another in a unified rhythm, as if each form were a natural extension of the previous one. Their surroundings, too, seem to be in perpetual motion, through ice, snow, and the ocean. Thus, the image transcends the simple scene it depicts: it becomes an evocation of the essential balance between transmission, presence, and adaptation.
600 mm f/5-6.3 Lens - 1/2500 sec at f/9 ISO 500