THE HEART OF THE WILD
Fine Art Photography from the Maasai Mara
The Approach
The Weight of years
The Vantage
Mama
What the marsh hold
Under her spots
The followers
Unbroken
Shared horizon
The wild ones
The watcher
What stillness hold
The long gaze
Where the sky begins
Poised
All eyes forward
Held together
Memory of dust
Breaking free
The carry
Crown of light
First steps
Below the surface
Project statement
The Heart of the Wild
Vasilis Moustakas photographs the animals of Kenya's Maasai Mara at close range, where proximity becomes part of the image. The texture of skin, the weight of a body, a gaze held for a moment and then gone. What remains are the frames where the animals appear as he experienced them: free, carrying a purpose of their own, fully alive.
The Mara first reached him as a boy in Greece, through films and documentaries, and for a long time it existed only in his imagination. Years later, that early fascination brought him there in person, to make a body of work from the place he had carried with him for so long. He worked on the ground alongside two Maasai guides, whose deep knowledge of the land made these photographs possible.
Black and white is the foundation of the series. Without color, the season, the setting and the particular day fall away. What is left is essential. Form, light, presence. Freed from their moment, the images belong to no specific time.
For Vasilis, the print is always the final thought. The series was conceived from the start as a body of prints, each image imagined in its finished form, where depth of black, tonal range and texture complete what the camera began. The print is not a reproduction of the photograph. It is where the work arrives.