Adam Oswell

Investigative photojournalist Adam Oswell specializes in covering the illegal wildlife trade where the dangers aren’t always clear and ever-present. He tells Keith Wilson about elephant abuse, burial pits and why gang busts go wrong…

- Keith Wilson

Adam Oswell Profile

Australian-born photographer Adam Oswell specializes in covering the wildlife trade and other conservation issues from his adopted home in Thailand.

He has contributed to productions with the BBC, ABC Australia, Traffic, WWF International, Humane Society International and many others.

His work has been published in numerous international titles including The Guardian, TIME, Asian Geographic, Science Magazine and Geographical.

Adam is a contributor to the award-winning book HIDDEN: Animals in the Anthropocene and his photos have been exhibited in London and Berlin.

His 2005 book Black Market: Inside the Endangered Species Trade in Asia was one of the first publications to extensively document the illegal wildlife trade.

It’s a humid April afternoon in the hill country of northern Thailand, and Adam Oswell can’t wait for the monsoon rains to arrive and cleanse the air. The tall middle-aged Australian has made Thailand his home for the past 20 years and feels at ease in the tropical heat, especially when it’s ‘beer o’clock’, which I sense will commence when this interview terminates. “I like the whole year except these past couple of months when they burn everything so the air quality is really bad,” he explains. Normally, Adam and his wife escape to Australia, but of course COVID-19 travel restrictions this year meant that wasn’t possible, “so instead we went to the south of Thailand, which was good. There were no tourists, it was cheap, and easy to find somewhere to stay on the beach.”