IMAGES ©URI AND HELLE GOLMAN / weareprojectwild.

com
Love
What
You You Will
Protect
EVEN A NEAR-DEATH
EXPERIENCE COULDN’T
STOP THE GOLMANS’
CONSERVATION MISSION

BY ROBERT KIENER
©KIM ANDERSEN

66 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER PPA.COM/PPMAG APRIL 2021 67

 inally they can relax. For several
weeks, Danish husband-and-
wife photographers Uri and Helle Golman
have been working tirelessly to track
down and photograph forest elephants
on the coast of Gabon. This Decem-
ber 2017 trip to the small Central
African coastal nation is the next
to last—the 25th—in their ambitious five-
year project crisscrossing the world to
search for and photograph endangered
species in their natural habitats.
They’re thrilled because they have the
photos they came to get, and there’s only
one more journey—to Australia—before their
project, called “Wild,” will wrap. Then they
can publish their long-anticipated book of
endangered animal portraits. Due to fly back
to Denmark in a day, they want to explore
68 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER
an outdoor market in Libreville, the nation’s
capital, that they’ve visited during previous
photo assignments.
It’s a typical 80-degree, muggy December
day, and the midday sun is beating down on
the couple as they leisurely explore the color-
ful art market jam-packed with masks, stat-
ues, exotic pearls, and native costumes. In-
trigued by the numerous items on sale, they
jostle against other shoppers who crowd the
busy venue. Uri is examining an intricately
carved African mask when out of the corner
of his eye he notices a man walking toward him.
Without warning, the man rushes forward,
pulls out a chef’s knife, and begins attacking
Uri. The first thrust pierces Uri’s stomach,
and the assailant twists it so it cuts into his
liver. Uri screams as blood flows from his
wounds and he tries to fight off the unpro-
PPA.COM/PPMAG APRIL 2021 69
 voked attack. He is stabbed again and again—
in the heart and then in the neck.
Despite his wounds, Uri, a former member
of the Israeli Defense Forces and a martial
artist, fights back and flips the man off his
legs. They tumble to the ground as shocked
onlookers stare in disbelief. Uri tries to knock
the knife out of his attacker’s hand, but the
man keeps stabbing wildly. Helle rushes over
and pounces on the man, digging her fingers
into his eyes. She’s stabbed severely in the
right hand, and her swift action helps the
couple disarm the attacker.
Helle helps her husband to his feet and they
dash to a friend’s waiting car that speeds them
to the local hospital. On the way, Helle tears
off her shirt and uses it to try to stanch Uri’s
bleeding. He’s been stabbed nearly 10 times
and is bleeding profusely. As the car speeds
away, she presses her shirt into his wounds
and tells him, “I love you. You must not die.”
His eyes half shut, he whispers, “I love you,
too. I’m not dying.”
A FIGHTER
The doctors at the local hospital did their best
to close Uri’s and Helle’s stab wounds, then
they were transferred to a nearby military
hospital for further treatment. Uri’s condi-
tion was life threatening; he lost more than
nine pints of blood. Doctors placed him in
70 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER
an artificial coma, and for days he hovered
between life and death.
Nine days later the couple was flown by air
ambulance to an intensive care hospital unit
in Denmark. There Uri remained in a coma
until early January, when he opened his eyes
only to realize he was completely paralyzed.
He could not speak, move, or breathe on his
own. Helle says the doctors took her aside.
“‘We are so sorry,’” they told her. “‘He will
likely remain paralyzed for the rest of his life.’”
But Helle knew Uri was a fighter. She had
been with him on photo expeditions in many
dangerous places, from the extremes of the
Arctic to the jungles of Papua New Guinea,
where he was trapped in a tribal war, to South
Africa, where he was charged by a massive
elephant. She had seen firsthand the courage
he displayed while photographing everything
from wild lions to leopards to crocodiles. On
his globe-trotting photo expeditions he’d
caught and recovered from cerebral malaria,
blackwater fever, dengue fever, and more.
She also knew how much their “Wild” project
meant to him. They’d spent years amassing
photographs of endangered animals and were
so close to putting their book together. Al-
though she understood what the doctors were
telling her, she felt Uri could beat the odds.
As she stood at his bedside in Rigshospitalet’s
intensive care unit near Copenhagen, she
PPA.COM/PPMAG APRIL 2021 71
 thought of the motto they’d formulated to
describe their environmental photography
mission and hoped it would help him fight
back: “What you love, you will protect.”
Uri remained paralyzed. Then two weeks
after Uri woke from the coma, the feeling in
his right leg returned, followed by feeling in
his right arm and then his left leg. The doctors
were amazed. Bit by bit, he regained the abil-
ity to speak. One day, when his two daughters
72 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER
from his previous marriage and Helle were
standing near his bedside, he looked at them
and said each of their names out loud, slowly
and clearly. Smiling at them he thought, “You
all are giving me the energy to fight, to come
back from the dead.” Uri, the fighter, was back.
Eventually Uri was well enough to be sent to a
rehabilitation center, where therapists helped
him re-learn to stand and then walk. In the
beginning it took three therapists to hold him
up and help him move his legs. Then just two.
Finally, one. Helle was a constant presence,
encouraging him, willing him to recover. He
took his first proud steps alone, albeit just a
few, nearly a year after he was attacked.
RENEWED PURPOSE
Today, some three and half years after he was
attacked, Uri describes himself as a work in
progress. Although he is still mostly confined
to a wheelchair, he continues to exercise daily
and hopes to one day walk freely. “It is going
to be years before I am back as I was,” he
admits with a wide grin as Helle looks on ap-
provingly at their country cabin in northern
Denmark. He admits, “Recovery and rehabil-
itation from an attack like mine is a lifelong
process.” He’s not able to hold and operate a
heavy camera and lens.
Both Uri and Helle are quick to explain that
PPA.COM/PPMAG APRIL 2021 73
 their injuries and recoveries have made them
stronger. “We have been on so many wild photo-
graphic expeditions during our time togeth-
er, but this has been, by far, the wildest one,”
says Helle. “And it has given us strength.”
Uri quickly adds, “I don’t think of myself
as a victim. When you’ve survived something
like this, there is no time to be depressed. You
have to go on living and loving.”
While they’re no longer as mobile, they’re
still productive. They recently published
their long-anticipated collection of endan-
gered wildlife portraits, the 208-page book
“Wild,” which they describe as “our love letter
to nature.” It has been highly praised. As the
famous scientist and environmentalist Jane
Goodall has noted of their work, “You cannot
look at these images—really look—and not see
the animals as individuals with personalities
and emotions …. We see image after image
taken and presented with love for the subject
and love for the natural world.”
Inspired by their keen desire to help stop
the loss of wildlife around the world, Uri and
Helle have also established the Wild Nature
Foundation, which focuses on conserving
74 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER
and restoring (“rewilding” is how the couple
term it) the world’s quickly vanishing wildlife
and habitat. Why take on such a monumental
task? “I am 46 years old,” says Uri. “In just my
lifetime we have destroyed 50 percent of the
world’s trees and 60 percent of all wildlife.
Time is running out.” Adds Helle, “We know
that we need to make people love nature to
help save the world’s wildest places.”
Uri pauses and tells the story of first visiting
Kalimantan, Indonesia, in 1997 on an assign-
ment to photograph birds and butterflies.
“I’d never seen such lush rain forests and
such a variety of wildlife before,” he recalls.
He went back in 2015 on another assignment
to photograph orangutans in the wild. The
small plane he was in reached cruising alti-
tude, and he couldn’t believe the sight below.
Tears began to roll down his cheeks. “Every-
Reprinted from April 2021 Professional Photographer magazine with permission.
©Professional Photographers of America • ppa.com/ppmag
where I looked, as far as I could see,” he re-
members, “the rain forest had been devastat-
ed and was replaced by oil palm plantations.
It broke my heart.”
After blinking back a tear, Uri explains,
“There’s another reason we have started
Wild. After what happened to us, we both
realize we have even stronger voices for na-
ture conversation. It seems like we were put
here to do this. You know, when I was on the
operating table immediately after the attack,
I was technically dead for a while.” He breaks
into a wide grin and continues, “And I have
discovered that when you tell people you
have been dead for two minutes and are
reincarnated, you really get their attention.”
A GENTLE WIND
Although Uri admits he is still is unable to walk
more than short distances and can’t hold a
camera, the onetime National Geographic con-
tributor has not lost the desire to photograph
wildlife. Recently a friend drove him to the coast
of Denmark to see what they might capture.
Their friend, Lothar Friis, set up Uri’s camera
with a 600mm lens on a tripod. Uri sat nearby
in his wheelchair. As a gentle wind blew in
from the coast, he spotted a flock of seagulls
in the distance. He has the use of one arm and
managed to squeeze off some shots of the sea-
gulls. One was a keeper. “It was exhilarating and
so emotional,” remembers Uri. “For just a mo-
ment I felt as if I could walk again, as if I were
free. It was, simply put, a magic moment.” •
Robert Kiener is a writer in Vermont.