ABOUT MOGENS TROLLE

Mogens Trolle is a Danish award-winning wildlife photographer, zoologist, mammal researcher and author. He has worked with and photographed wildlife for more than 25 years and on all seven continents.

He specializes in portraits of wild mammals, exploring their facial expressions and the look in their eyes – hence the name of his ongoing photo project, ‘Eye Contact’. The major focus of his photography over the last nine years has been primates which has led him on numerous journeys to the jungles and mountains of Asia and Africa with the goal of capturing the unique personalities of a selection of the world’s most charismatic monkeys and great apes. One of his primate images won the “Animal Portraits” category of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition in 2020.

Born in Denmark, Mogens Trolle’s passion for wildlife was spurred when he as a young man while travelling around South America was offered a job as a guide in the Pantanal wetlands of Brazil, one of the best places on the continent to see wildlife. He ended up living in the Pantanal for two years, getting involved with wildlife research and conservation projects. Ever since, wildlife has been the focal point of his career.

Mogens Trolle holds a master’s degree in biology, zoology and mammalogy (the study of mammals) from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. For a number of years, he conducted research on larger mammals in the Amazon and the Pantanal, pioneering the use of camera traps for scientific purposes in South America, studying species like ocelot, puma, maned wolf and tapir, and discovering a new species of deer in the Peruvian Amazon.

In 2004 he shifted from science into working fulltime with public engagement, ‘wildlife communication’ and wildlife photography, among others publishing books on the wildlife of Africa, Greenland and the Galapagos Islands, respectively. Since 2008 he has been employed at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen where he works with science communication and exhibition development.

Simultaneously, he travels the world 2-3 times a year to photograph wildlife. Recent trips have brought him to destinations such as Gabon, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Borneo, Sulawesi, India, China and Japan. In 2013 he moved to Africa to spend a whole year photographing wildlife in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana.

His wildlife images have been published worldwide and in 2022 his primate portraits were exhibited at the Xposure International Photography Festival in the United Arab Emirates and at various major cities around China. Most of the primates he has photographed are threatened and many are not well known to the public, and Mogens Trolle uses his portraits to shine a light on these species, hoping that his project will help inspire people to support conservation efforts.