Parish priest of Beenleigh, south of Brisbane, Fr Tony Girvan speaks with ROBIN WILLIAMS about a hobby that brings him moments of grace.
He’s sharing some of the gifts that flow from that in an exhibition being staged by the parish school
WHETHER it is big cats in Africa, orang-outangs in Borneo or penguins in the Antarctic, Fr Tony Girvan has photographed them all.
This year the Beenleigh parish priest racked up a long-held dream to have photographed wildlife on every continent.
A number of those wildlife photographs will be featured this month (October) at ARTWORX12, an art exhibition at the parish primary school St Joseph’s Tobruk Memorial School.
Fr Girvan won’t be on hand to see his parishioners’ reactions to his work.
When the exhibition opens he will be on annual holidays – photographing crocodiles in the Northern Territory.
He said his photos at the exhibition were from “all over the world”.
“I can now boast, as of early this year, that I’ve now photographed wildlife on every continent,” he said.
“So there are some from Antarctica, some from Asia, some from Africa, some from North America, not so many from Europe, and there is some Australian stuff there, too.”
Fr Girvan said he had always loved photography.
“Since the digital age it’s just become more accessible,” he said.
“Whenever I take time off I like to travel and I have always taken a camera along and captured the images of what I see.”
Fr Girvan said he had grown up loving animals.
“My mother in particular is very big into saving animals, rescuing animals and doing whatever she can – feeding the birds and the possums in our backyard – and I grew up surrounded by pets and loving animals,” he said.
He said that, while in the seminary, he was taught that creation was God’s first act of revelation.
“So I have taken this on board as a bit of a motto and celebrated my faith through the beauty of nature, through creation – in particular wildlife – and life in general,” he said.
Fr Girvan said combining that love and his photography started out small with photos of creatures such as lizards and moved on from there.
“Since then with my annual leave I always tend to focus my trips or plan my trips around the next wildlife hotspot and it has built up from that,” he said.
He said Africa had always been a dream.
“It’s a wildlife photographer’s paradise, North America is too if you go to places like Yellowstone (National Park), that’s the ‘Serengeti’ on the American continent,” he said.
“Antarctica, that’s always been the dream too and I managed to fulfil that in January.
“That was the last continent I had to tick off the map and one I thought I would never achieve.
“The sheer beauty of that place – you talk about the Year of Grace – that was an act of grace.”
Fr Girvan said there was something spiritual in encountering wild animals in their natural habitat.
“You can go to a zoo and it is not the same. You get some great photos from zoos and some great animal shots but to see them in their natural environment the way God had intended them is nothing less than a spiritual experience; there is just no two ways about that,” he said.
He said his photography had led to some “remarkable encounters” and he recounted the story of a shot of a small female mountain gorilla in Rwanda.
“We went up this mountain in Rwanda to photograph the mountain gorillas and there was just a moment where I was watching her as much as she was watching me,” he said.
“We had intruded on their world, and they are probably used to tourists doing so, but it was like she was as fascinated about me and what I was doing as I was of her and she was eyeing off all my equipment and studying everything I did and it was only a brief moment, for about a minute or two, but it was a moment of grace.”
Fr Girvan said there was something powerful about pondering the nature of God while surrounded by His handiwork.
“Creation itself is the great canvas upon which God paints the story of humanity,” he said.
“We are not merely the observers of this great portrait of Life, we are also subjects within that image.
“The natural world, these last remaining fragments of Eden, are fragile and precious. They reveal the world to us in all its wonder the way God intended.
“Through my photography I am able to celebrate the beauty of life and the love of a God for whom this small, fragile planet, our home, is His greatest gift.”
Fr Girvan said Jesus had a strong appreciation for the natural world and often referred to it in his parables.
“The example for us to do likewise is clear,” he said.
He said in Genesis we read that God gave mankind dominion over the world.
“All too often we have taken that term to mean that we somehow have been given the right to exploit the natural world for our own selfish and narrow gains,” he said.
“As we are finding out all too well in the 21st century we are doing this to our peril.”
Fr Girvan said dominion as Jesus revealed was not to be served but to serve.
“So I believe God gave us this world to serve and protect it for all time not to exploit it for our own time,” he said.
“Not to protect the natural world, as Pope John Paul II said, is to dishonour both God and our role as stewards.
“Through my images I capture the light of a vanishing world.
“There is so much out there that is precious and I don’t want us to find that we don’t discover how beautiful creation is before we lose it.”
