Frans Lanting’s wild things

By Samantha Weinberg

Early on in Frans Lanting’s new book, “Into Africa”, there’s a photograph of four lionesses that fills a double-page spread. It’s taken from below their eye level and each of them is looking in a different direction. The sky behind is the deep orange of an African dusk. It’s a beautiful image, but most mesmerising are their expressions: intent, wary, focussed on the evening’s hunt. They are unbothered, it seems, by the photographer who is lying in the grass in front of them.

It is this ability to capture the world of wild creatures as they go about their daily lives that sets Lanting apart from his peers. In the foreword to the book, Wade Davis, an anthropologist and explorer from the National Geographic Society, describes Lanting as “arguably the greatest nature photographer in the history of the genre”. Over three decades and across the continents – though most often in Africa – he has produced images of creatures that seem to drill deep into their psyches, creating in us, his audience, an extraordinary sense of empathy for them.