A report that is both fascinating and thought provoking comes in from the Daily Mail: Smile you're on ele-vision: How a camera attached to an elephant's trunk captured amazing jungle views
But startling as they are, the pictures are not as amazing as the reflections they provoke.
There's something in them that I don't recall ever seeing in photographs before. Indeed, there's something in them I don't think I've ever seen in animals face to face. What's in them is the absence of "me." If you spend a moment studying them, I think you'll see what I mean.
To get these pictures, John Downer figured out how to send an animal into the realm of animals and report back. The technology was a web cam. The idea was human too, but fortunately not too human. The genius of it was to take humans out of the equation of photographer and subject.
Over a period of three years in the Pench National Park in India film-maker John Downer
"fixed web-cams to four elephants. One carried a "trunk-cam" - a device resembling a huge log concealing a camera which could be held in its trunk and dangled close to the ground. Another had a "tusk-cam" hooked over its tusk. The elephants moved so steadily that the images are pin-sharp."
The results will be broadcast as a three-part BBC One series: Tiger - Spy in the Jungle, which is narrated by Sir David Attenborough. I'm sure it will be a mesmerizing series if these photos are anything to judge by.
For these photographs are, even at a casual glance, arresting in a way we're quite unprepared for. Or rather in a way I don't think we've experienced since we walked out of the animal kingdom millennia ago.
Visible in these images is the world of animals when high-powered humans just aren't around emitting the static of their jagged souls. This is not a world captured by carefully positioned and very powerful telescopic lenses, which is how we are used to seeing images like this. This is a world that is up close, very personal and very unhuman.
The famous war photographer Robert Capa observed, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough." That's what we have here, although we aren't looking at a war but at a world where humans simply aren't present with their distracting presence; their insufferable "buzz" of "busy, busy, busy." And that fact seems, to me at least, to cause a profound and distinct difference in the animals that are looking into the elephant's lens.
It's hard to put a name to it, but something fundamental has changed in how the animals hold themselves and regard the "photographer." The "wild dog" doesn't know he's wild and doesn't know he's "dog." He is who he is. The leopards are Schrodinger's cats without Schrodinger. The images emerge out of the animals rather than being "taken" from them. They are fully present. After all there's no "photographer" there.
There's just that old elephant that's been hanging around the water hole for the last ten or fifteen years. Just another neighbor in the hood ambling by with that old log of his again, or that weird bit of stuff still dangling off his tusk. He really should get that looked at. Oh well. Nothing to see here, folks, just carry on being yourselves. Pay no attention to the shiny thing inside the log.
One of the problems of carrying around a very large brain and being a very smart monkey is that your thinking gets harsh, hard, and loud. Animals sense this loud thinking and, from long, hard, and harsh experience, know that they have to be on their guard when the smart monkey comes around pointing things at them.
But strap a camera on an elephant and you've got a much more relaxing scenario. Maybe that's it. Maybe the animals are simply much more relaxed around some old elephant than they would ever be around us.
Or maybe it's more subtle still. Maybe once the loud and brash soul of man is taken, literally, out of the picture, the quieter souls of the animals can, at last, emerge as they actually are. Maybe that's how, finally, we get close enough.
The Tao helps us abandon ourselves, find our common ground with other forms of being, and just BE instead of overthinking and damaging everything with our precious emotions.
Masters of these techniques have created art that shows animals as these pictures show them. Without language or explanation, they too are thought-provoking and glorious.
Posted by: askmom at March 26, 2008 9:28 AMThese pictures say to me "Mikey's back on the menu, boys!" The animals are being themselves, and that is being wild animals and a very big danger to our little monkey-selves. Looking at them, I could feel a tingling at the very back of my skull and I had the urge to pick up a very big stick.
Posted by: Mikey NTH at March 26, 2008 11:41 AMThe elephant doesn't see the other animals as a threat, so the other animals don't see the elephant as a threat. We see other animals as threat, so other animals see us as a threat. Now, there are times when other animals can be a threat, but such are actually rare occasions.
I remember a wild life show produced by Paramount Pictures. It was a half hour long, and showed what happened behind the camera. Like a duikar checking out a cameraman's lunchbox as he tries to chase it away. Or a troop of baboons cadging for treats or making off with camera gear.
Animals will act as relaxed and unconcerned around humans as the ones in the pictures you shared did around the elephant, but the humans have to be relaxed and unconcerned in the first place. We get nervous and tense it makes the animal nervous and tense. The secret to dealing with wildlife is to keep cool. You keep cool the other, non-human, guy will stay cool too.
Posted by: Alan Kellogg at March 26, 2008 1:05 PMHey, if I want to know what a bunch of dangerous animals look like from the Elephant's perspective, I just turn on Fox News.
Posted by: Gagdad Bob at March 26, 2008 6:57 PMI just showed this to my stepdaughter who just turned 10. She loves animals--just loves them.
She said: "Huh...." and then giggled and giggled.
Innocence recognizes itself and finds joy.
Posted by: Gray at March 30, 2008 3:13 PM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.