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 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."
