Jungles - Hardcover

Lanting, Frans; Eckstrom, Christine K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3822863092 ISBN 13: 9783822863091

Publisher: Taschen America Llc, 2000

Synopsis

""Jungles"" is a celebration of the patterns of life in the tropics by master photographer, storyteller, and naturalist Frans Lanting. In a glorious portfolio of images made over a period of twenty years in jungles from the lowlands of the Congo to the cloud forests of the Amazon, Frans Lanting interprets the aesthetic splender and the astonishing natural realm of the tropics. His provocative images represent a personal vision of the emerald worlds that shelter the ultimate expression of life on personal vision of the emerald worlds that shelter the ultimate expression of life on earth. Through images and words, Lanting takes readers on a dazzling journey into a realm of bewildering complexity, where nothing is the way it first appears. In photographs that range from spectacular gatherings of rainbow-colored macaws to the misty exudations of a forest at dawn, he evokes the luscious sensuality and intricate natural order of the tropics. His stories chronicle a series of rugged expeditions into remote tropical wilderness areas, from the otherwordly island continent of Madagascar to the soaring mountains of Borneo, to capture the mesmerising beauty and eerie fascination of nature at its most fantastic.

About this title

Review:

Jungles are mysterious and even threatening places, among the least explored landscapes on the earth--and just the sort of place, therefore, that you might expect to find the ever-intrepid wildlife photographer Frans Lanting. "The tropical forest may be a naturalist's paradise," he writes, "but for a photographer it can be a nightmare. Once you are inside it is all blood, sweat, and leeches. Whatever you take into the forest becomes part of the food chain, whether it is your equipment or yourself."

But difficult conditions come with the work. In this oversized portfolio of 120 full-color images made over two decades on four continents, Lanting chronicles the life of the world's jungles, organizing the work by themes (water and light, color and camouflage, anarchy and order, form and evolution). As befits the jungle's manic pace, few of the images are static, as Lanting captures macaws and butterflies and even frogs in flight, orangutans brachiating their way from vine to vine, turkeys and snakes scrambling and slithering. Some of the images are nothing short of astonishing, among them views of an otherworldly cloudforest lobelia thicket in Hawaii and of treetop expanses that exhibit the phenomenon called "canopy shyness," an arboreal version of animal territoriality. Admirers of Lanting's previous books, such as Okavango and Eye to Eye, will prize his new collection, while rainforest devotees will find much to inspire them in the images he brings before us. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

Christine Eckstrom is a writer and editor specializing in natural history. She collaborates with husband Fans Lanting on fieldwork, book, and other publishing projects from their home base in California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Taschen America Llc
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 3822863092
• ISBN 13: 9783822863091
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 259