BIOGRAPHY
Justin Mott is an award-winning documentary, editorial and commercial photographer and cinematographer born in Rhode Island, USA and based for over eight years in Southeast Asia.
His editorial work has primarily been for the New York Times, for whom he has covered more than 100 diverse assignments throughout Asia and beyond. His editorial clients also include National Geographic, BBC, CNN, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, T Magazine (New York Times Style Magazine), The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Discovery Channel, Forbes, The Smithsonian, Der Spiegel, Bon Appetit, and numerous other international publications.
He is founder and owner of Mott Visuals, a boutique commercial photography and production studio with offices in Hanoi, HCMC, and Bangkok. Mott Visuals brings Justin’s unique storytelling background to the commercial market.
Justin is the resident photographer on History Channel’s Photo Face-Off, a humorous educational series sponsored by Canon.
In 2008, his work on Agent Orange orphans was awarded the Marty Forscher Fellowship for humanistic photography given out by the Parson’s School of Design in New York and was published in the PDN Annual Photography Awards Issue. Justin’s work has won awards from the Travel Photographer of the Year, PDN Annual, NPPA, CPOY, and the Missouri School of Journalism.
In 2013 his collective work as an assignment photographer for the past eight years titled “The Changing Face of Vietnam” was featured on the BBC.
He also has wide-ranging experience on commission for numerous NGO’s, including The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations, the Red Cross, the Asia Foundation, Asian Development Bank, The United States Government, and Doctor Without Borders.
NO MAN’S LAND
June 6 – September 15, 2019
No Man’s Land is the first installment of Kindred Guardians, Mott’s long-term series documenting people who devote their lives to animal welfare and conserving wildlife.
With no male northern white rhinos left on the planet, No Man’s Land is a poignant swan song to the dedicated caretakers of the last two remaining females, Fatu and Najin.
The northern white rhino is a subspecies of white rhino that historically roamed across Uganda, Chad, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, following widespread poaching and civil war in their home range, they are now considered extinct in the wild.
In 2009, Najin, Fatu and two males, Sudan and Suni were translocated to Ol Pejeta Conservancy from the Czech Republic’s Dvůr Králové Zoo in hopes that the native habitat for the animals would be conducive to breeding. In the years since their translocation, the rhinos experienced a series of unsuccessful breading attempts and the devastating deaths of Suni (2014) and Sudan (2018).
Najin and Fatu reside in 700-acre enclosure with 24-hour armed security. The caretakers who patrol the park encounter the likes of lions and marauding poachers, the latter of which fired on the guardians in 2018 leading to a firefight that left three poachers dead.
The future of Najin and Fatu’s species now lies in the development of in vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques which have never before been attempted on rhinos. Together with Dvůr Králové and IZW Berlin, Ol Pejeta Conservancy is in a race against time to raise 9 million USD towards their Make A Rhino initiative.