On the stealthy trail of London's urban foxes

Common foxes (Vulpes vulpes) arouse the same conflicting passions among the British as Brexit. Some consider them a plague or an evil aberration, and only want to hunt them down or exterminate them.. Others venerate them as the vanguard of rewilding, a living symbol of the return of wildlife to cities.

It is estimated that in the United Kingdom there are more than 33,000 urban foxes roaming freely in parks, gardens and streets. And 10,000 of them have their habitat in London. In the Tower Hamlets district, the foxes go out to make a living at the same time that the brokers close their portfolios in the City and Canary Wharf, accentuating the black and white contrast between the poorest district and the financial heart from the city.

All these insights have served photographer Carlos Alba (Madrid, 1984) to spin a disturbing visual tale titled I'll Bet the Devil My Head, with the foxes letting themselves be guided by their survival instinct on the asphalt, in contrast to the privileged office workers. that come from betting their head on the devil (in reference to Edgar Allan Poe's story).

“My intention has been to document the hardship of making a living in the East End, with the paradox of being surrounded by two of the largest financial centers in the world,” emphasizes Carlos Alba.. “My idea is that the book acts as a global fable of inequality, with the use of the fox that has been so familiar to us since Aesop's fables 2,500 years ago.”

Cunning is the mark of the fox, and Alba had to manage to “interact with them in an organic way”, following their trail and locating their burrows, “learning their schedules and customs.”. He waited for them with the patience of a wildlife photographer, and almost always surprised them “with the violent aesthetics of the flash at night, to give greater drama to the visual story.”

Thus he achieved snapshots such as the fox reflected in a puddle in the middle of the street, the cubs playing, the adults hunting or fighting to mark their territory…. Because urban foxes are very like them: elusive, cautious, solitary. Anyone who has come across them in London will have noticed this.. And only very occasionally do they act aggressively towards humans, even though the tabloids (the same ones that defend fox hunting and Brexit) come out with alarming headlines of children injured by a fox.

Carlos Alba, former colleague in EL MUNDO, drew an unexpected parallel between the great division caused by the European Union and “the tensions over the foxes”. Brexit won, but the foxes voted to remain. And there they continue, reminding us that “we humans have to find a better way to share the planet with wildlife.”

I'll Bet the Devil My Head is presented on October 18 at the La Fábrica bookstore in Madrid. Carlos Alba's photographs will then be exhibited starting October 25 at Art Photo in Barcelona. In London, meanwhile, Matt Maran has also approached urban foxes from his perspective as a nature photographer. His book Fox: neighbor, villain, icon tells of the explosion of wildlife in the city during the pandemic, following the trail of a family of foxes in a community garden and discovering along the way their importance “as guardians of the urban ecosystem.” .