Frans Lanting - Life: A Journey through time

Frans Lanting is one of the photographers whose work I came across as a reader of the US magazine Outdoor Photographer ten to fifteen years ago. I revisited his website a few months ago when putting together a list of photographers that I had found inspiring for my learning log.

I followed the link to "Life A journey through time" and quickly scanned through this astounding collection of photographs. I was fully engaged in Elements of Design - assignment 2 at the time, but I have now taken more time to look through the images.

This is a collection of eighty-six images in which Lanting aims to portray the history of life from its origins to the present time using photographs of the world today. There are too many images to review one by one. Furthermore, it does not seem possible to link directly to individual pictures. I have therefore restricted my comments to some of pictorial qualities that are relevant for the topics covered in this course so far.

Figurative representation:

These are nature photographs, in other words photographs of the real world today. However, they are used to represent major milestones in the history of life.

• The first image, for example, conveys the idea of the "big bang" at the start of the universe. A series of concentric tones radiate from a single point just off centre giving the impression of the aftermath of an explosion. It was a real surprise to discover that the subject is a slice of petrified tree trunk.
• Another example which I liked represented the destruction of the dinosaurs after an asteroid struck earth. This was portrayed by a silhouette of two marine iguanas with the blurred image of a bird in the sky above. This resembled the artists impressions of dinosaurs with a pterodactyl in the sky that I knew as a boy.

Use of contrast:

He uses framing and focal length to emphasis visual characteristics of the subject.

• The most striking example is the use of a long focal length to magnify the size of the legs of a group of elephants relative to an impala at a drinking hole. The picture represents the contrast between giant herbivores that roamed the earth at the same time as more slender and agile mammals.
• Another example is his use of a short focal length to emphasize the broad feet and strong toes of a barefoot native guide in the rain forest of Brazil.
• His photograph of horsetails is cropped so that the viewer can believe that he is looking at the tree size plants that used to cover the earth.

Use of movement:

Living things adopt a whole variety of strategies to both succeed as predators and/or defend themselves from predators. The collection includes photographs of fish, birds, deer, cheetah with motion blur revealing their bodies at speed.

Use of graphical elements:

The photographs include a wide range of graphical elements. Two particularly stunning photographs have a similar composition:-

• A photograph of a Black heron in Botswana with its wings spread over its head. The blue-black shape of the birds body creates a flattened semi-circular shape, which is reflected in water.
• A photograph of a water-lily taken from water level creates a similar flattened semi circular shape, which is again reflected in water.

In both cases the main subject is a rugby-ball shape placed just off centre.

Use of light and colour:

I will mention just two examples.

• In a photograph of plants adapted to drought, his photograph is taken in a vertical frame against the sun. Large flower heads in the foreground are backlit and the top of the frame is bright with the suns rays. This gives a strong impression of the difficulty of living in strong sunlight with limited supplies of water.
• His photograph of fern fronds was striking for me as the unfolding stems are mauve in colour, instead of the expected green. The unexpected colour made it difficult to identify that the plant is actually a type of fern. Also the colour stands out really well against a muted green background.

I have just been reading the section in Michael Freeman's book "The Photographers Eye" on Intent and his observations on the choice between a "clear or ambiguous" portrayal was interesting. He mentions Life magazine as having the ethos of choosing photographs which "say it all" without ambiguity. (When I first looked at Life: a Journey through Time, I mistakenly assumed that this was a project for Life magazine. I subsequently found out that Frans Lanting was working for National Geographic at the time of this project.) Nevertheless, I feel that the each photograph in this collection has a powerful visual impact which tells the narrative of the history of living things in a clearest possible manner. Indeed, the narrative adds to the pleasure of viewing the collection in a way that is not present for example when viewing the winners in the Nature Photographer of the Year competition.

They may not be the sort of picture that conveys an air of ambiguity that one would want to contemplate over and over again, but this is not their purpose.