ML137964
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Subject: (Interview). Subtitle: Frans Lanting. Timecode In: 00:01:14. Timecode out: 00:42:38. Notes: Photography. Equipment Notes: Stereo=1; Dual-Channel Mono. Radio Expeditions Franz Lanting/ Alex Chadwick September 1997 AC 00:01:20 Talk about making animals feel at ease. 00:01:34 FL 00:01:35 I think that there are a lot of parallels between photographing animals and photographing people and in the book I make that point To me there is no distinction between people and animals. I try to see them all as individuals with their own particular quirks and preferences. When a portrait photographer invites someone into the studio it's his or her job to do the research, to understand what makes the person tick, then create the conditions that make the person feel at ease or sometimes by provoking a reaction in a certain manner bring out that fleeting quality that reveals someone's personality. And I do very similar things when I'm working with animals. Sometimes I'm very passive, I just allow things to happen in front of me but I do know what I'm after, on the basis of research. But other times it becomes a more interactive process, when I spend a lot of time with animals and they allow me to get close, they become aware of me. There can be a process where they react to something that I do, vice versa and that can lead to interesting moments and some of those have become part of that book. AC 00:02:47 How do you get the photo of the female crocodilian that's down in So. America in here? You're so close. 00:03:13 FL 00:03:14 That's actually a bit of a sinister image because later on we learned that that particular Caiman, it's a she Caiman was implicated in the disappearance of a tourist from that same lake. When I was with her it was a game of peek-a-boo. I was on a little raft on that lake and she would surface and then look at me and then disappear again when I would try to move in a little bit closer and over time that portrait happened. AC 00:03:44 How close were you? 00:03:45 FL 00:03:46 I was less than 30 ft. AC 00:03:51 Have you ever taken human portraits? 00:03:56 FL 00:03:57 Oh yeah. I do a lot of documentary work. Usually my photographic work of animals or any other natural history phenomenon is within the context of a social or human environment. I try to show the links between nature and people, what we have in common, what we have at stake, and the impacts that we have on natural processes. So I do photograph a lot of people but for this particular book I decided to strip away all that context and just allow these animals to make contact with the viewer in attempt to show the universality of certain personalities, of certain reactions and stress that kinship between all life. 00:04:45 AC 00:04:46 How do you manage to put an elephant at ease? 00:04:49 FL 00:04:50 Elephants are actually very easy to put at ease because they're, I hate to use the word intelligent because it almost seems like a denigrating remark when it comes to elephants. They're very sensitive and they understand completely what you have in mind so I can project myself into a situation and I applied that in Botswana, where elephants are relatively relaxed because they have not been subjected to trophy hunting or a lot of poaching and I really believe that you can project yourself with a certain body language and make the elephant understand that I do not have anything bad in mind. And by spending a lot of time in particular spots over time they got used to me and I could get closer and closer and some of these images in the book were made while I was lying flat in the sand looking up with a wide angle lens and again they were less than thirty feet away. It's a bit scary. When they rumble I could hear it in my stomach. AC 00:05:59 There's a photograph of them drinking at a stream. In the legs are the delicate ... (Notes truncated)
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- 20 Oct 2008 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 20 Oct 2008 - Ben Brotman
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- 20 Oct 2008 - Ben Brotman