Sometimes, when I am photographing wild animals in their natural environment, I see beauty under an encroaching cloud of doom, and experience a sudden stab of joy tempered by poignancy. In a haiku, a poet expresses fleeting natural beauty experienced in a profound moment of illumination. Another characteristic of a haiku is its minimalism, its simplicity.
There is also the concept of mono no aware, roughly translated as beauty is transient and therefore has a bittersweet - pleasure tinged with pain – ring to it.
So, in the tradition of a haiku and mono no aware, here, in a simple, minimalistic style, are my bittersweet moments encountered on the wild plains of Africa, my visual haikus if you like, under ominous threats to wildlife.
Prints of this series are made on Hahnemuhle German Etching textured 310 gsm photographic paper. The resulting print looks more like a poetic, moody drawing, less like a photograph.
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