Breathtaking Portraits That Meet Insects at Their Level

Photographer Thorben Danke hopes his intimate and artistic insect portraits can be a catalyst for caring

Nathan Allen
Published in
5 min readSep 22, 2020

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A close up photo of a beetle in rich, iridescent blue and green jewel tones, with small claws and segmented limbs
Oil beetle (Meloë violaceus). Photos courtesy of Thorben Danke

In 2018, I was an undergraduate researcher in an ecology lab when I found a paper detailing the 30 year decline of insects in a Puerto Rican forest. My attention was captured, and I wasn’t alone —…

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Nathan Allen
Tenderly

writer. illustrator. manic collector of pens and notebooks. bug guy from North Carolina. see my work at www.nthnljms.com