‘I’m used to going around the world travelling through space on assignments, but on this occasion I was travelling through time,’ he adds, enigmatically, of the years spent piecing the project together. ‘If you look hard enough,’ he reveals, ‘the signs are still everywhere.’Throughout the ‘Life…’ shoot, Lanting thought of himself not so much as an archaeologist, but more like a time traveller. With all the images in the book previously unpublished, through research and talking to scientists Lanting found that there were still opportunities to picture what had happened during our planet’s formation all those millions of years ago. Eye to Eye: Intimate Encounters With the Animal World Lanting, Frans, Eckstrom, Christine K.

Yet for this project I wanted to show the past.’ It’s an interesting challenge because photography is associated with capturing the present – we’re always chasing moments. ‘I wanted to go back in time and explore the roots of biodiversity.

‘I wanted to put together a book that shows a bigger and broader perspective on nature,’ he recalls. The origins of the Rotterdam-born nature photographer’s latest project lie in the fact that he shoots many assignments digitally for magazines, including National Geographic, that place him in the fortunate position of traversing the globe, camera in hand. Frans Lanting’s lavishly illustrated, large-format book, Life: A Journey Through Time, was almost a decade in the making and tells the story of life on Earth from its earliest beginnings, utilising stunning images of eye-catching creatures and geological formations found in the present.

Eye to eye frans lanting