Celebrated wildlife photographer Jim Brandenburg dies aged 79

Celebrated wildlife photographer Jim Brandenburg has died aged 79.

In the field of wildlife and nature, Jim Brandenburg is among a handful of photographers who truly deserve their ‘legendary’ status. Along with fellow National Geographic contributors Frans Lanting and Michael ‘Nick’ Nicholls, Brandenburg was one of his generation's most revered wildlife photographers. 

A measure of his greatness is the fact that of the 40 most important nature photographs of all time, chosen by the International League of Conservation Photographers, four are by Jim Brandenburg. One of the four is this image, ‘Brother Wolf’. 

Brandenburg regarded this image as “one of the two most important pictures in my life”, the other being his seminal white wolf leaping across the ice of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. 

In an interview with N-Photo published in 2014, Brandenburg said, “I’ve been lucky. I’ve got a few images that almost everybody knows: the wolf showing just half a face peering from behind the tree, shot in my backyard; the leaping wolf is another one. Did you know they were shot within the same month? They’re my two most famous pictures, I suppose.” 

At the time, Brandenburg wasn’t sure he had captured the moment when the wolf stared directly at his lens; nor did he know how long it had been watching him. It was a fleeting glimpse, but just enough time for the photographer to raise his Nikon F3 and 300mm f/2.8 lens to his eye and fire a single frame on a roll of Kodachrome 64. 

“I saw it for a moment, and then it was gone,” he recalled. It was only when the yellow box of processed slides arrived that Brandenburg found out he had got the picture.  

‘Brother Wolf’ proved to be a turning point in Brandenburg’s career. As a result of this image he devoted the next few years to making a photographic homage to wolves, and spent a total of six months on Ellesmere Island documenting the life of the white wolves of the Arctic. This experience led to an award-winning book, White Wolf, which was followed by another best-seller, Brother Wolf, his ode to the timber wolves of his home state of Minnesota.

In attempting to explain his fascination with wolves, Brandenburg preferred to speak as a journalist, something he is well qualified to do as a past winner of World Press Photo: “I think it’s the most misunderstood and most persecuted animal in the world. We hate wolves: Little Red Riding Hood and other stories. I like to tell the wolf’s story as a journalist because it has a very sophisticated social structure. To me it’s a wonderful story.”

Jim Brandenburg died on Friday April 4 2025 at his home in Medina, Minnesota. He was named Wildlife Photographer of the Year in 1988, and Magazine Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photographers Association in 1981 and 1983.