All Eyes Forward

Maasai Mara, Kenya 2023

The elephants in the background had just driven him off. They closed ranks around their young and the confrontation was fast and far away — I did not see most of it and I would not have photographed it anyway. I am not interested in the hunt or the kill. I want to photograph these animals in the state of being. He was walking out of it with a wound on his back leg, slightly limping but carrying himself like nothing had happened. The elephants stayed on the ridge behind him. Two species in one frame, one of them leaving the field on his own terms.

This image belongs to The Heart of the Wild, a body of work made over two weeks in the Maasai Mara with Tinka and Jamlick, two Masai guides who knew the land and the animals in a way I never will. The trip started a long time before — when I was a kid in Greece watching The Lion King. That was the first time I felt something for wildlife.

The first days in the Mara were not good for me. Too much was pulling at me and I was shooting too much, reacting to everything around the jeep. Somewhere in the middle of the trip I slowed down. Started being more deliberate. Waiting for the moments that carried weight instead of chasing every animal that moved. That shift is what made the work.

Maybe one percent of what I shot over those two weeks survived the edit. If an image did not make me feel something, it was just documentation. Documentation is not the work. This one stayed because of how he was walking — not what had happened, but how he carried it.