Photography Book Unveils Concealed Patterns Influencing Our World
Iceland, 2025. In southern Iceland, braided waterways weave across expansive outwash plains. As glaciers recede, torrents of sediment-laden water flow downstream, laying down sand, silt, and volcanic ash in interwoven channels that are continuously reshaped by movement, floods, and seasonal variations.
In Jon McCormack’s perspective, he considers himself less a nature photographer and more of a “pattern photographer.” This label aptly captures his longstanding fascination with natural geometries. For years, McCormack has revealed the concealed patterns that characterize our world, whether they are minute mineral formations or sweeping vistas filled with flocks of birds in flight. Such imagery lies at the core of the photographer’s latest monograph, which honors the various rhythms linking our environments.
Released by Damiani, McCormack’s Patterns: Art of the Natural World traverses the globe, encompassing everything from the volcanic shores of Iceland to the wilderness of Kenya. Each photograph offers a fresh perspective, exposing organic phenomena that might have gone unnoticed. A photo from 2023 taken in Iceland exemplifies this, featuring an ice cave nestled deep in the Vatnajökull glacier. After a flash flood and intense cold, air bubbles eventually froze into tiny, delicate rings, adorning the cave’s floor like ripples in water. McCormack captures the moment with precision, immortalizing a transient instant through a vibrant color scheme, an evocative composition, and a rare immediacy, making it feel as if viewers could simply reach out and touch the ice themselves.
Within Patterns, numerous photographs dwell in this intimate scale. A vulture guinea fowl isn’t shown within a broader Kenyan vista but is instead presented up close. In McCormack’s final shot, we trace the bird’s complex plumage, adorned with fine white specks set against deep shades of charcoal and indigo. Likewise, the vastness of the North Atlantic is condensed into a minuscule landscape sprinkled with diatoms, a type of algae prevalent in nearly all water bodies. McCormack utilized a microscope to photograph these organisms, each showing an almost metallic luster and arranged in a pattern that seems deliberately designed rather than naturally occurring.
Conversely, other images possess grander scope. An aerial image from Iceland, for example, unveils braided rivers flowing across wide outwash plains, the earthy hues and formations resembling thick paint strokes. In a contrasting scene from Botswana’s Okavango Delta, trails gradually created by hippos are depicted; these creatures, due to their limited vision, depend on scent to navigate in darkness. The olfactory signals linger in the water each night after the hippos graze, creating familiar pathways across the terrain. These routes might be “subtle on the ground,” as the photographer notes, but from above, they are “unmistakable.”
To attain the book’s visual variety, McCormack utilized various cameras and photographic methods. “There are either seven or eight different cameras involved in the making of [Patterns],” he told Petapixel in a recent conversation. “It’s essentially like, ‘Here’s the thing I want to do, and what’s the simplest way to achieve it?’” The photographer even relied on his iPhone, whose camera software he assisted in developing at Apple.
Overall, Patterns stands as a powerful testament to McCormack’s dedication to nature. Indeed, proceeds from the book support Vital Impacts, a nonprofit led by women, founded by photographer Ami Vitale, that aims to enhance conservation efforts. Thus, the volume serves not only as a literal but also an artistic avenue of advocacy, delving into the natural world in all its geometric complexity—from the vast to the minute.
“I wanted people to witness what I observe in nature,” McCormack stated in National Geographic. “I aimed to present the wonder I perceive in a manner that is approachable. I didn’t intend for it to be an extravagant art book, textbook, or treatise. This book is my visual poem to our planet.”
Patterns: Art of the Natural World is now available for purchase through Bookshop.org and Damiani’s website.
In his new monograph, photographer Jon McCormack provides a captivating new way to engage with the world: through its intricate and sometimes concealed patterns.
Now available for purchase, Patterns explores the globe to celebrate natural geometries, ranging from microscopic mineral formations to sweeping vistas filled with flocks of flying birds.