Michael Wilkins
Menu
Black and white photograph of an elephant seen from close behind and to the side, deeply wrinkled hide filling the left of the frame, one tusk and the edge of an ear visible against pale sky and scrub.

Hide and Tusk

Pumba Game Reserve, South Africa · December 2022

1D X Mark II, 400 millimetres, f 5.6, 1/500 of a second, ISO 640

Close enough that the animal stops being a shape and becomes a surface.

Too close for the whole animal, which is usually when elephants get interesting. From here the hide reads as landscape — every crease holding a line of shadow — and the tusk comes in from the dark mass as the one clean curve in the frame. Black and white because the picture is entirely about texture, and the dust-grey of an elephant gives colour nothing to do.

Part of Pumba, a series.