This book offers an incomparable spectacle, that of an intimate
face-to-face with the animal, here treated as a subject in its own
right, on an equal footing with man, and it encourages us to take
the time to contemplate it, to better question our relationship to
the wild world and our place in it. And if the photographer has
long since chosen black and white, it is to better play with the
incomparable light of Africa, its singular purity that gives the
feeling of being in direct contact with the material, without
filter. Laurent Baheux's approach is not that of a naturalist or
ethology-loving photographer, he does not seek to describe behavior
or to unravel the mystery of a sensitive area of the animal that
has remained unknown until now. What he finds with African
elephants is the feeling of a rediscovered plenitude, of wonder at
the world, of a rebirth, of a reconnection with the living. Far
from the crowds and the urban world, it is in the heart of African
national parks that he experiences the deep meaning of life, and
that he offers himself the luxury of slowness, essential when he is
'is about letting the animal approach. The elephant obliges man to
humility. We are nothing compared to his power and his
intelligence. It is he who decides on the meeting, or, on the
contrary, who imposes his distance. We are only "tolerated guests",
as Laurent Baheux reminds us. The elephant is not a predator and it
is the man who threatens its existence today, competing with it for
the control of a territory which is shrinking more and more every
day. The pressure of human activities, the demographic growth are
the dangers which endanger its survival. As an extension of his
militant commitment and his anti-speciesist discourse which seeks
to break down the psychological barriers linked to the
categorization of animals - wild, farmed, domesticated - according
to their degree of utility or their "nuisance" power, Laurent
Baheux provides new proof of the need to save elephants and protect
their environment, not just because they populate our collective
subconscious, from illustrated children's books to the travel
stories of early explorers, but because they are closely linked to
the balance of our planet and that they refer us, like mirrors, to
our own finitude, ineluctable, we who resemble them so much, so
strong and so fragile at the same time. "Courage is the reverse,
the armed arm of wonder. [...] Where many, cynical or disillusioned
have retreated, [Laurent Baheux] has this power to rely on the
beauty of things, to believe in it and to be enraged at seeing it
mistreated. He has that faith."
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