A Deadly Embrace

Indian photographer Palani Mohan first encountered elephants through his mother's worship of Ganesh, the Hindu god of luck and auspicious beginnings, who carries an elephant head on a human body to symbolize harmony between the two species. Later, traveling through Asia as a photojournalist, he encountered these gentle giants firsthand and observed "how closely we live with elephants," he says. "Elephants and humans are competing for space in Asia so much that their habitat is fast declining."

Mohan was drawn to photograph elephants wherever he went for magazine shoots. He followed the elephant trail through 11 countries—including India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand and Cambodia—and gradually evolved into an environmentalist, recording through his images the sad plight of a vanishing species.

Mohan's collection of black-and-white images, shot over six "very long" years, is now a handsome big-format book, "Vanishing Giants: Elephants of Asia" ( Editions Didier Millet), with a foreword by British environmentalist David Bellamy. In the cover image, a hand reaches out to hold an elephant's extended trunk, embodying the idea of relationship. Inside, most photos similarly focus on the tangled connection between man and beast. Some are loving: one memorable shot depicts an elephant "kissing" a young Thai conservationist. Others depict captured elephants crushed into tight crates, or being poked with sharp tridents to break them in; one image reveals a weeping elephant, a tear trickling from one eye.

In the end, Mohan says, "We Asians have to figure out whether we love or hate these animals." As his own images so starkly reveal, the answer is not always clear-cut.

© 2008