Elephant Noir
An elephant is difficult to hide. That is part of what interested me about this sequence. Made through brush at the edge of a river, these photographs never quite surrender the whole animal. Eyes disappear. Trunk, tusks, mud, water, and weathered skin take over.
What began as a frustratingly obstructed view became a more private way of seeing a bull at play: less a conventional portrait than a study of movement, concealment, and the strange expressiveness of an elephant’s trunk.
This was one of my all-time favorite sightings. We had been tracking this bull when he pushed a group of buffalo out of the river and then settled in to bathe and play. From where I was shooting, brush kept breaking up the view, and I remember being convinced I was missing the photographs.
Later, that obstruction became the thing I liked most. His eyes are almost never visible. Instead, the trunk becomes the protagonist—curling, reaching, splashing, and folding around his tusks. What felt frustrating in the field became something more intimate and a little voyeuristic: a private moment glimpsed through the trees.
