Adventure Beat

"Life: A Journey Through Time" is photographer Frans Lanting's latest project, combining his nature and wildlife images with music by Philip Glass. It had its world premiere last weekend in Santa Cruz, Calif. Adventure Beat editor Christian Kallen has this review.

Frans Lanting is one of the world's foremost wildlife photographers, with a portfolio that stretches from Antarctica to Africa, diatoms to elephants, the easily recognizable "charismatic megafauna" to obscure nocturnal tree-dwellers. He's been published in every major photography magazine from

National Geographic on down, and sold countless posters, calendars, postcards and, oh yes, books. Even if the name is only vaguely familiar, you've stared into the eyes of his animal portraits, and been touched by them.

What distinguishes the Dutch-born photographer's work is not just his technical excellence — the images are razor-sharp, even when the subject must be a soccer field away. And it's not just his choice of material, which is as wide-ranging as his passport's entry stamps. Instead, it's the idea behind the image, or more accurately the thinking behind a collection of images. He's the master of high-concept photography: finding the word or phrase or unifying idea around which the images orbit, not just illustrating the idea but amplifying it, demonstrating it. 

"Eye to Eye," his 1998 book for the German publisher Taschen, is the epitome of this aptitude. Page after page, one creature after another looks out at the viewer, eye to eye, soul to soul — lions, chimpanzees, macaws, sea turtles, penguins, bears, caimans, tarsiers (those obscure nocturnal tree-dwellers). The cumulative effect easily achieves what Lanting intended — to "show the strength and dignity of animals in nature." But more than that, the images create a sense of identity, of commonality between the viewer and the viewed, brewing up an almost mystical experience of transcendent unity in all life forms. (I am the walrus?)

"Life: A Journey through Time" is Lanting's latest project, and it takes high concept to a still higher plane. This time he's joined forces with composer Philip Glass to create a multimedia concert experience that attempts to demonstrate the entire flow of life, from the big bang to the full flowering of life on Earth. The work had its world premiere at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz the weekend of July 29-30, with Marin Alsop conducting the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra. 

"Life" is a story told in some 300 images over an hour of Glass' insistently rhythmic yet melodically inventive music. The images are projected on a screen 48 feet by 13 feet, suspended above the orchestra, and they blend and fade and move and dance across the screen in time to the music, taking the viewer from volcanic eruptions to microscopic diatoms to cloud forest landscapes and eye-to-eye contact with some of our animal friends from Lanting's earlier work.

To call "Life" ambitious is only partly right — it's also audacious, and maybe tending toward the self-absorbed. I felt it lacked the fleet-footedness of its most obvious predecessor, Disney's "Fantasia," and it might be more comfortable to view in an IMAX theater than a concert hall. Or, for that matter, in the privacy of your own home.

The show soon goes on the road, and will transform into alternate "Life" forms. Other orchestras may pick up the baton and recreate the concert — conductor Alsop has already agreed to lead the East Coast premiere in February 2007 with the Baltimore Symphony, where she is incoming musical director. The Los Angeles Symphony and the London Symphony have also nibbled.

Then there's the book, to be officially released by Taschen on September 15 but currently available through Lanting's web site. There's also a photographic exhibition that premieres September 23 in Leiden, the Netherlands, and is scheduled to tour through Europe and perhaps to the States as well. Finally, there's the educational website lifethroughtime.com, a "portal for the project and a source of information on the history of life on earth." 

Or you can hold out hope that someday Lanting, Glass, and others will gather their resources and put out the definitive 6.1 Dolby surround-sound high-definition DVD, where "Life" can become your own personal transformative media experience, and you can enjoy it how you will from the comfort of your own sofa.