Jackson Hole Art Blog

I don’t have many answers, but I do have lots of questions. Jackson’s sustainable and artistic efforts should fuse. But how? What models are out there in the world that we can study, even emulate?

Jackson’s future, in many ways, depends on the questions we ask. We should be asking more “baby step” questions and the larger ideals will naturally evolve. Just the other day, the Grand Teton Music Festival announced some news: Anonymous pledges (signaling that donors  don’t wish to be placed on pedestals for their contributions) totaling $3.5 million will establish a Housing Fund that will support its participating artists and stabilize “the largest line item in the Festival’s budget.”

The money is out there. Affordable housing, one of our biggest crises, will be available where the Festival is, in Teton Village. Where the artists actually work. In theory, not a lot of additional traffic. Green.

If we’re not going to create better mass transit opportunities, we’d better put housing where workers work.

I did not attend Jackson’s recent Energy Summit. No doubt I missed a lot of cool interaction, scintillating discussion, theory, science, inspiring vision, good networking and even a photo op or two.

The questions that formed in my mind, that weren’t answered to my satisfaction prior to the Summit, are these:

What was its cost?  Will Summit organizers offer up a financial report of this and any subsequent summits, as it is “for-profit” and not “non-profit?”

Who receives any fees the community pays out to the Summit? Why should the community contribute to it now, rather than to established initiatives? Perhaps it’s simply a choice, but am I the only one feeling stretched?  And kind of guilty just for sometimes having to say “no?”   In this economy, I’d love a time line for practical Summit results related to Jackson.

How big was this summit’s carbon footprint?

Are our new, empty buildings green? Are they going to be made green before or after they’re occupied?  What is the plan to fill all these empty spaces?  Is anyone considering reducing rents in exchange for tax credits, in order to attract new businesses that would provide good jobs?

How do such summits aid or detract from efforts to resolve, in a financially prudent way, our Comprehensive Plan?  Do they address land use? What is the interface with the planning process?

Will we price out middle class families looking for memorable, but affordable experiences here? If we can’t offer lodging under $400 a night, “regular” people can’t visit. And if they don’t visit, they won’t know the valley, or feel any impetus to protect it. How can we move forward with being green and ensure keeping it “real?”

Many less sexy communities without real estate hyper-spikes haven’t crashed as hard as Jackson.  How will we address that?

A tunnel running under Teton Pass would provide safer and faster commutes, run beneath habitat, and balance real estate values. On this side of the Pass, values would come down a bit.  Over in Idaho, they’d go up a bit because Jackson Hole would be more accessible. We’d give the mountain back to wildlife.  Mass transit would operate more efficiently.  That road is treacherous.  Avalanche emergencies and related deaths would be reduced.

Ted Kerasote once suggested a tunnel, in lieu of a bridge, for GTNP. How about a tunnel to go under that freakin’ Pass?

“The Earth is at a crossroads never before experienced. My hope is that we begin a new path, one of enlightenment, understanding, appreciation, and tolerance for all living things.” - Tom Mangelsen.

Here in Jackson Hole, wildlife photographer Tom Mangelsen needs no introduction.  Our arts, particularly our conservation-based arts, have long looked to his intuitive, prescient practice of seeking out species and their habitats around the globe.   Tom Mangelsen is a given, thank goodness. But preservation of wildlife, its assured survival, will never be a “given.”  We are responsible, and Mangelsen has taken up the sword.  He won’t put it down.

His awards include “Outstanding Nature Photographer of the Year” honors from the North American Nature Photographer Association and “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” from the BBC.

So welcome the chance to take in his work - a significant and renowned oeuvre - and reconnect to the wildlife and landscapes Mangelsen spends eight months a year exploring.  The National Museum of Wildlife Art opens “On the Natural World: Photographs by Thomas D. Mangelsen,” on October 1.  The exhibition remains up through April 25, 2010.

“These animals, even the most seemingly insignificant ones, are the barometer of the health of this planet,” says Mangelsen.  “It doesn’t take long to realize that we are on that same chain, we are all linked in nature.”

I am the proud owner of Mangelsen’s quintessential book, “The Natural World.” It is a prized possession.  Through his looking glass I peer. I close my eyes, fan the pages and stop.  I do this several times, opening my eyes to see where I’ve landed.

Lord, he’s been written about.  But my guess is, Tom (May I call you “Tom?”) is most proud of his connection to Jane Goodall, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a UN Messenger of Peace. She thanks Tom for his “magnificent enterprise,” and she speaks of his work:

“There I found myself in a magic place, for the breathtaking photographs around the walls transported me to faraway countries, some loved and familiar so that looking at them woke a yearning to be back, others that provided tantalizing images of other worlds I had yet to experience.  Here, at last, were photographs that had captured…the very essence of the wilderness scenes depicted.”

I wish I could be there this Thursday, but I’m traveling.  You all go, you hear?   What better place to take in Mangelsen’s work than within the rustic stone walls of the Museum, crouched on its butte like a watchful cougar?

For information, log on to www.wildlifeart.org or phone 307.733.5771.

The Jackson Hole Art Association addresses global warming with its summer exhibition GAIA and Global Warming: Women Artists Champion Nature, kicking off with a free “art talk” at the Center for the Arts Theater on June 24, beginning at 7:30 pm.    The show opens June 26 with a 5:30 pm artists’ reception at Artspace; the work remains on display through September 27, 2009.

Curated by Lowery Stokes Sims, GAIA looks at climate change through the eye of the arts.  In other words, this is not an exhibit about climate change; it is a show examining–considering–the myriad ways the arts have explored themes of global warming, sustainability (which, in its true sense, refers to any activity or practice that, no matter how often executed, never leaves a corrosive environmental trace) and responsibility.

Hope Sandrow, Peggy Diggs, Margaret and Christine Wertheim (of the Institute for Figuring), Nancy Macko and Judy Cotton are participating artists.

So, GAIA is not land art–art that disappears or transforms–nor is it work designed for a specific public installation. The show is at once a retrospective and commentary. Tracing the “explosion” of enviro-art back to 2006, GAIA embraces the concept that artists are at the vanguard of environmentalism.  Creativity and its derivative tactile arts reflect our experience of the world around us.

The Art Association notes that collaborations with “….scientists, statisticians, public policy wonks, municipal officials and arts organizations (has) set the protocol for this genre of art making. Artists thus have been at the vanguard of concretizing (sic) scientific, social, political and economic theory around the environment into specific projects which they have situated in venues for maximum exposure to the public.”

June 24th’s free panel discussion features moderator Lowery Stokes Sims, forest ecologist Nalini Nadkarni, and artists Nancy Macko, Susan Thulin and Lyndsay McCandless.

For more information, phone the Art Association at 307.733.6379.

Lots and lots of National Museum of Wildlife Art news and updates!   Here is a full list of activities related to our museum on the hill.

#1:  Dr. Seuss!

Whose childhood–and by extension, adulthood–has not been charmed by Theodor Geisel’s opus?  We all occasionally find ourselves thinking “Seussical.”

“The Lorax: Original Illustrations by Dr. Seuss” is on display at the museum through September 7.   NMWA notes that the Lorax’s tale is a cautionary one, a tale ahead of its time, warning us of our own penchant for wrecking our beloved environment.   The exhibit gives us access to Seuss’ process, from conceptual sketches to to camera-ready line art.  Anthropormorphism of wildlife and our relationship to the natural world are the coal in creative story-telling engines; Disney has built an empire around these themes.   Stand out exhibit characters include Swomee-Swans and Humming-Fish.

“Seuss was not one to shy away from contemporary topics or social commentary. The Lorax is among his most pointed, taking to task a company whose greed causes grave environmental harm,” notes the Museum. ” This exhibit combines original art as it probes humanity’s relationship with nature, making a perfect match for the National Museum of Wildlife Art.”  The exhibit is on loan from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library & Museum.

Special fun-for-kids activities tied to Seuss’s art will be offered throughout the Museum. The Lorax exhibition is included in Museum admission: $10 for adults, $5 for kids 5-18, and free for children under 5. A family rate of $30 for the first two adults, first two children, and $1 for each additional child helps make the Museum affordable for larger families.

#2:  Out of the Box!

NMWA’s biennial “Out of the Box Show and Auction” is one of the museum’s best-loved events.  This year, the show and sale takes place Friday, June 12 and includes over 115 creatively altered boxes by regionally and nationally acclaimed artists.   Prices have typically ranged from an affordable $25 to $4,000 and more.  Proceeds support the Museum’s adult and youth education programs.

Each box is unique, and artists are invited to work in any medium as long as the work retains its function as a box.  The box artworks will be auctioned by auctioneer Jim Loose, and the evening’s M.C. is KMTN’s “Fish.”   Of course, there are door prizes: two CityPass books, a two-hour art appraisal by Art Appraisals of Jackson Hole, LLC, two bird-themed notions boxes and a tour of the newly opened Jackson Hole Raptor Center with guide Roger Smith.

Volunteer Chair Ann Nelson notes the event is a labor of love, with 15 volunteers devoting much of the last two years organizing the show.    “The community of Jackson Hole anticipates Out of the Box with great enthusiasm; this show will have something for everyone,” says Nelson.

Out of the Box is free for museum members, $7 for non-members; free for children.  Event admission includes light hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar.  Doors open at 5:30 p.m.    733-5771.

#3: Wyoming 2009 Junior Duck Stamp Winners!

Through August 23, take time to visit this year’s entries and winners of the Wyoming Federal Junior Duck Stamp Contest. Now in its 15th year, this exceptional program, a national art competition for students in grades K - 12 simultaneously teaches art, conservation of wetlands and natural resources, and awareness skills.

The exhibit is traditionally on display in the Museum’s King Gallery; check with the front desk to confirm.   The list of winners is long, and every entry is a winner in itself.

The following information on is provided by the Museum.

Eighteen year-old Bryant Helm, of Cokeville, Wyoming, received the 2009 Best of Show award for his painting, “Provocative.”  His oil painting depicts a striking portrait of a Long-tailed Duck.  Bryant’s painting represented Wyoming at the Federal Jr. Duck Stamp contest Wednesday, April 22, 2009, at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. The winner of the national competition will receive $5,000, a trip to our nation’s capital along with a parent and the art teacher, and have his or her artwork used to make the 2009-2010 Junior Duck Stamp.  Proceeds from the sale of the Junior Duck Stamps, which cost $5.00, support conservation education.

Baily Schupp, a eight year-old student from Pinedale, for the second year in a row,  won the 2009 Betty Nelson Artistic Promise Award for the best art in the youngest age group.  The Betty Nelson Artistic Promise Award was established eight years ago to recognize the artistic accomplishment of students in the K-3rd grade age group and to honor the late Betty Nelson, a generous supporter of the Junior Duck Stamp program.

The 1st through 3rd place Wyoming winners of the Jr. Duck Stamp contest can be viewed online on the Museum’s web site, WildlifeArt.org.  The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place contest winners will be honored at a dinner and awards ceremony at the National Museum of Wildlife Art on Saturday July 18, 2009.

For more information, please contact Amy Goicoechea at (307) 732-5435.

Oh, I LOVE this.  This is a story about Vertical Gardens.  The Art of Green.  Green urban gardens. Happy Earth Week, Jackson Hole!  The photo above is from Vertical Garden’s Exit Art website.

Vertical Gardens is “…an exhibition of architectural models, renderings, drawings, photographs and ephemera that depict or imagine a vertical farm, urban garden or green roof.”

Imagine Jackson’s new downtown garage transformed as a vertical garden.  A vertical forest, a vision of vines!   Imagine it surrounded with indigenous wildflowers and plants, an ever-changing public art installation, transforming itself with every season.  Wow.

Vertical Gardens encompasses over 20 projects by “…artists and architects that envision solutions for building greener urban environments.” Cities all around the world are finding ways to include gardens in their planning, knowing the urban aesthetic will increase a hundred fold.   They’re great ways to feed and inspire urban dwellers, and since Jackson’s downtown is bent on adding multi-million dollar commercial and residential spaces, how about including green gardens in the design?   Provide space for sustaining, aesthetic projects in every development and pay it back, pay it forward to the community.   And bring our town’s profile up to new age marketing snuff while you’re at it!   Bring the region’s great beauty right past the city line and into…town’s heart.

Here’s more from their site:

“Largely based on the principles of hydroponics, vertical gardens would also be mostly self-sustaining because they would capture large amounts of natural sunlight and water, and could use wind as an energy source. In a country where cities are suffocated by high rises, cement and industrial materials, where can green space exist? As this exhibition demonstrates, one possible answer is “up.” These and other urban parks and gardens provide areas for socialization and recreation; a location for a city farm or community land-trust; an outlet through which hundreds of people can learn about farming and agriculture; and the addition of much needed plant and animal life to the otherwise concrete jungle.”

Vertical Gardens is a project of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics) , which is an off shoot of Exit Art, which “…is an independent vision of contemporary culture prepared to react immediately to important issues that affect our lives.”  The New York City center, 25 years old, engages in “…experimental, historical and unique presentations of aesthetic, social, political and environmental issues.”  Exit Art says it “absorbs cultural differences that become prototype exhibitions,” and embraces multiple disciplines.   Starting as a ‘grass roots’ project, it has grown into a contemporary green, artistic powerhouse.  Always changing, it is now internationally recognized for its innovations, curatorial depth, media savvy and stick-to-it-ness.

Few endeavors build community like gardening.  And few activities provide the warm sense of well-being that gardening does. Win. Win again.  If we incorporate the Verticle Garden vision into ours, we won’t be able to take our eyes off the results.

Tuesday, March 3

Art After Hours
Presented by the Dragicevich Foundation
7:00PM in the Cook Auditorium
FREE

It was a century ago when William Hornaday, Theodore Roosevelt, and early members of the American Bison Society (1905) established the first bison reserves. These early efforts were primarily directed at the capture and containment of the few remaining bison on fenced preserves to save the species from extinction. Present efforts to conserve the largest land mammal, the American bison, are far reaching and complex.

In 2006 the American Bison Society was re-established with a new mission directed at the ecological restoration of the species. Keith Aune is Senior Conservation Scientist for the North American Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and works on several conservation issues including ecological restoration of the American Bison.

Aune has been involved in wildlife research in Montana and Wyoming for 32 years. He has conducted field or laboratory research on black and grizzly bears, wildlife diseases, wolverine, cougar, and, more recently, bison. Aune is currently based in Bozeman, Montana, and will discuss the history of bison conservation and recent bison restoration efforts by WCS through its American Bison Society Initiative.
Co-sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society.

For information regarding this and other NMWA programs, phone 307-733-5771 or log on to www.wildlifeart.org.

(This essay was written January 2008, inspired by tributes to Martin Luther King. This month, we are inspired by our new President-elect, Barack Obama. Also, a reminder that this website’s content protected by copyright–TC)

The day before our nation celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, I went to the gym. Alone in the place for over half an hour, I plodded along on the treadmill, channel flipped and considered my future and the future of Jackson Hole. How would they be tied together in the coming years? How would my new business, Jackson Hole Art Tours, fare? Would it be a rewarding experience, working to weave this new venture into Jackson’s tapestry? And would the business truly give back, and make a difference, as I hope?

After a while Franz Camenzind arrived, and now we were two. Not long ago I’d sent a note to Franz, an emotional response to the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance’s holiday meeting and party. The evening featured Charlie Craighead’s slide presentation about his life growing up with wildlife, and how our relationship with wildlife has had to change as people flood to the valley and we develop more and more land. It was a wonderful evening, spent with some of Jackson’s most creative and change-making citizens. The crowd was warm, optimistic; everyone seemed bright with hope.

And hope is everything.

I clicked over to the Tennis Channel, looking for Nadal’s Australian Open quarterfinal match. It wasn’t on, and I complained to Franz. In the second I looked away from the screen, Franz said, “Isn’t that it?” I looked up, and there was Nadal.

“Anything else you’d like me to make happen?” Franz teased.

“Yes,” I replied. Boo-yah, my own personal genie! “I’d like you to make me the person who wakes everyone up to the true connections between the arts and conservation. I want to be that person here by 2010 and I want to instigate a dynamic, creative project that will draw everyone’s attention to the fact that, now, our environment and arts cannot survive without one another.”

Remember, I’m on a treadmill here. And those weren’t my exact words, but they’re close enough.

I sensed Franz doubted the validity of my theory. But he humored me. “Think about it,” I said. It takes creativity to communicate the beauty and utter indispensability of our natural world. Consider, for a second, the void of a world with no painters, sculptors, writers, and all manner of artists sending up messages about the earth? And where would artists be if not for our planet’s magnificence? What else inspires infinite prayers, offered via a brush, or a pen, or a camera’s lens? We would be living in a hellish, cold place. Bleak.

Art testifies, and as one of my favorite writers, Scott Russell Sanders has written, we’re telling the holy.

Franz nodded, then asked me: “But what came first, the natural world or artists?”

The natural world, of course.

Having previously lived in Jackson, I returned five years ago. To hasten reconnecting to the valley, I attended the January 2004 ‘Greater Yellowstone Power of Place’ conference. Panel ‘teams’ made presentations and talked about their connections to one another. I attended the Arts and Environment discussion. The fact that the Arts and Environment panel had been conceived as an obvious duo struck home. I recall that while all the panel members honored each other’s work and visions, there was an impasse when it came to actually naming a tangible project that would allow everyone there to contribute, and that would provide something of educational value. Stoked by the conference energy, but feeling shy and new girlish, I didn’t speak up. However, I did describe a vision I had to one of the conference organizers.

I imagine a giant, interactive screen. Glowing, luminous. This screen would depict everything within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem: terrain, wildlife, flora, our rivers, lakes, weather, the sky, and snow—everything indigenous to our region. The screen’s function would be to educate the user about how development, global warming, water and air pollution, and human traffic change our ecosystem’s balance. For example, if someone wanted to know how five (or any number) of drought years would affect either wildlife, our rivers and lakes, forests and wilderness, they would touch a certain spot on the screen and the screen’s technology would transform its image to depict those effects: trout would having a tough time, declining lakes, all wildlife being challenged to find nourishment, parched grasses and trees. The number of wildfires would grow, and with those come smoky skies. That’s the short list, of course. The picture would be redrawn.

Artists could imagine and render images. Conservationists and scientists would inform these artistic choices, be the books behind the art. And technology would figure out how all the components would function, build in images and text. There would be nothing like it in the world. This reflection of us would be its own technological museum, and any kid could use it, and want to use it. Adults would want to use it, as we use our computers and I-phones.

This morning, on Martin Luther King Day, I flipped on my computer to scan the New York Times E-paper headlines. Photographer Camilo José Vergara has documented 12 urban murals of King; many are in Los Angeles and New York. He says such portraits of King are everywhere. One mural depicts King as the center figure in a triptych of images that includes Jesus and the Virgin Mary. One depicts him with Pope Paul—he’s also with Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X. Another shows King as a great teacher. And one portrait paints King’s image as a strong, confident leader atop a mountain of really hip graffiti art.

On any given holiday Google incorporates relevant artwork into its home page graphics. Today three boys are drawing a chalk portrait of Martin Luther King on the sidewalk. How wonderful is it that the artists are young kids? How do they know about Martin Luther King? What inspired them to draw his image?

Viewing these powerful, beautiful and respectful images, I was reminded of the recent political flap over whether King was responsible for igniting racial reform, creating its destiny and bringing his message home, or if this was Lyndon Johnson’s victory.

Who first brought the Dream?

Martin Luther King, of course.

–Tammy Christel
January 21, 2008

Jenny Dowd’s chalky sculptures look like teeth. Or books made of teeth.  For Dowd, teeth and hair are linked to information.

One can’t find everything on the Internet.

An obsessive need to examine, retain, manipulate and isolate information informs Dowd’s current exhibition, “A Silent Dialogue,” on display at Jackson’s Teton Art Lab through January.  For this show, Dowd treats her space like a botanist’s spread board.  Porcelain book forms set on pressed pulp shelves are arranged like data card perforations.  But Dowd’s sculptures also have the look of excavated finds about to turn to dust; cataloged lost anthologies, with titles like “Books about Pods and Teeth,”  “Small Moth Journal,” and  “Three Part Pod Anthology.”

The work suggests the De Stijl movement’s purity and pared down universality - as well as its spirituality – imposed upon the Renaissance’s curiosity cabinets, likely the original ‘found object’ art form.  Those cabinets were small, framed stages filled with collected objects, their maker’s assembly of natural and unnatural articles. Often displaying botanical specimens, curiosity cabinets were attempts to understand and control the world while providing a way to marvel at its mysteries.

“If someone dies tragically and they can’t tell who the person is, they go to dental records,” explains Dowd.  “It’s amazing. You can’t destroy yourself.  They can extract DNA from hair without follicles.   There’s infinite information in that tiny package.  We gain and lose so much information, and that goes back to books; and that goes back to my fear of losing information, not just my own, but everything everywhere.”

Turning fear of loss into energy for collecting, and recycling that into creating delicate, want-to-touch-it sculpture is Dowd’s lifelong m.o.  As a child on family vacations, she collected paper napkins, scribbling places and dates on the backs.  She packed the napkins away in boxes.  She has difficulty throwing things out.   And she has frequent dreams about losing teeth; dreams that began during a period when she lived and worked in rural Georgia, making daily contact with a population living on the poverty line.

She began counting the people with less than four teeth.

“After Hurricane Katrina, a lot of people from New Orleans came to our town.  And it was around then I started noticing people’s teeth,” says Dowd.  “And me, I can’t afford to go get my haircut, go to the eye doctor, but every six months I go to the dentist.  I don’t care if I pay in change.”

What is so interesting about Dowd’s work is her channeling of potentially gruesome themes into gentle, poetic sculpture. Placed on Dowd’s books are fat cicada specimens, expertly mounted. They’re sleeping beauties beneath gossamer mesh.  Other books display yellow-winged butterflies, ginkgo leaves, and ladybugs.  Some contain spores, nuts and pods. String and hair wrap them, and Dowd’s tea stains suggest geological striations. Faint writings trace book surfaces and are difficult, if not impossible, to read.

Dowd thinks in temperatures rather than colors.  Remove color and you are left with structure and texture.  Dowd searches for warmth or, alternately, a sense of loss or wear.   Early book sculptures were crafted to look as if they’d been sitting in an attic exposed to floods or fire, suggesting various stages of decay.

Now, they’re rescued.

Is Dowd baking the bricks of a new arts religion, mixing biology, aesthetics and creation?  Is she the Creator?  She’s trying to make sense of something.  By remaking books, pods, and teeth forms she hopes to know everything about them. A previous project, “Mistaking Artifice for Reality,” was arranged as museums display ancient artifacts. Countless Golden Rain Tree seedpod models were positioned on stands outfitted with magnifying glasses, with a stool that placed Dowd a perfect six inches above her pods.  Dowd’s projects are specifically scaled to accommodate her own physicality.

The making of one form leads to the making of ten, then hundreds, one thousand.   Like dividing cells.

In the current thicket of ‘found object’ art, Dowd’s sculptures are a new and alluring species.

Tammy Christel

(This “Call of the Wild” cover story was published by the National Museum of Wildlife Art)

Innate gifts, properly nurtured, blossom. A garden of artistic aptitude flourishes when inspiration is supplied. Nature photographer Frans Lanting is a case in point.

Lanting grew up in a small Netherlands village, which, over time, was given over to petrochemical and industrial interests. Lanting came to the United States to study environmental planning, in hopes of reversing such erosive trends. The field frustrated Lanting; bureaucracy walled him off even more from the natural world he loved. He moved to California, where that state’s seductive, wild beauty took hold of his soul. Lanting’s passions and artistic gifts found their inspiration, and the photographer set upon the path that has made him one of the world’s most recognized nature photographers.

Frans Lanting’s photographic artistry is described by Thomas Kennedy, National Geographic’s former Director of Photography, as encapsulating “… the mind of a scientist, the heart of a hunter, and the eyes of a poet.”

And, it’s true. Lanting is a naturalist, an explorer, a bit of a scientist, and of course, a master photographer. This fall, his exhibition, “Jungles,” comes to the National Museum of Wildlife Art. His extraordinary collection of photographs, taken around the globe over a period of 20 years, is an impassioned endeavor to depict the “kaleidoscopic nature” of jungles. To capture for his audience the “…glimpses of faces that melt into shadows, the bursts of color and shimmering light.”

But, let’s add another element, “ a conductor’s orchestration,” to Kennedy’s list. Because Lanting’s work is full of music…

Tammy Christel: “In your book “Jungles,” you describe your first night in the jungle as a sleepless one, because of the “tinkling, honking, and whistling” of hundreds of frogs; you use the words ‘crescendo,’ and ‘rhythms.’ Are you thinking of music as you photograph?”

Frans Lanting: “Yes, I often do. I look at images not just as single entities but also in sequences. “Jungles” is an example of that, where these images are strung together, and it becomes a visual experience for people in an impressionistic sense; the book isn’t so much about the science, but about the feel of it, as a sequence of a body of work.”

TC: “And “Jungles’” four sections-Water & Light, Color & Camouflage, Anarchy & Order, and Form & Evolution- are separate movements within a single composition.”

FL: “Right. It is interesting you ask about it, because we are in the midst of an ambitious new audio visual production that involves the music of Philip Glass, to be combined from images from a new project called “The Evolution of Life.” The world premier, an orchestral performance combined with a sequence of images, will take place here in California at the end of July.”

TC: “What about Kennedy’s description of you as scientist, hunter and poet?”

FL: “I think there are aspects of all three identities in what I do. I have to know the significance of a place or subject, and scientists are my best friends. They go on field trips with me, I talk to them, and I read what they write. But, I need to get out in the field myself, and make things work on the basis of solo encounters.

A hunter’s mindset is important, in terms of being opportunistic, but you must also be very responsive to your subject. You have to get within range, you have to gain trust. All apply, and not only when you are working with animals. You encounter similar circumstances with landscapes, or with people.

Ultimately, an image has to work. Timing, preparation, the logistics of going into a place and finding things potentially worth photographing, it has to come together as a final image. It has to do something to people. Move them.

That is where the lyricism–the poetry–comes in, in an image’s metaphorical and symbolic quality. I like to think of my work not just as capturing things specifically, but allegorically, and conceptually.”

TC: “I am struck by your discovery of graphic detail–the minute textures and patterns of the jungle. Many of your photographs remind me of abstract art, or textiles. This is true whether we are looking at ‘Raindrops on a Leaf ‘in Peru, climbing vines, red and green macaws–all are alive in themselves. Everything is, in a way, interchangeable. In your jungles, the Amazon Basin’s Rio Torre is a slithering, creamy snake, a pale tendril. A rain forest at sunrise could just as well be vaporous, sun-kissed cumuli. Bird of Paradise feathers are cockleshells. A glass-winged butterfly is from Tiffany.”

FL: “Yes, absolutely. What I’ve tried to do with ‘Jungles’ is summarize and interpret the experience of being in a rain forest. The overwhelming sensation when you are there yourself. There is texture and detail everywhere–photographically, however, it is very difficult to capture in its totality. So the images are often impressions of details, and from that we build a larger view of the forest.”

And then, there is the human element. Lanting exposes humanity in the natural world. As a chimpanzee stretches, we see a dancer’s warm-up exercise. A fairy tern is an ascending spirit; a chameleon’s eyes hold Aristotle’s wisdom.

Lanting agrees that he is trying to connect people with nature in a positive way, via composition, and universal artistic principles.

“We can’t deny that connection,” says Lanting. “It is really the reason we like anything that has to do with animals. I try to express a creature’s individuality, so people think that this is not just any ape, any frog–this is an individual creature with its own existence and spirit.”

Going out on a lowland forest limb, I tell Lanting that his camera’s eye brings us so intimately close with Jungles’ creatures, it seems we are nesting with them, verging on entering their very beings.

“I’ll leave that particular interpretation to you!” laughs Lanting. But I appreciate what you are saying. I regard it as a great compliment. I try to be a portrayer of creatures needing an interpreter. So that is good.”

END