Seeing big cats hidden behind ordinary screens

 

Munier showed the children a print of a photograph he had taken a year earlier.

In the foreground, a falcon the color of leather perched on a lichen-speckled boulder. Behind, slightly to the left, hidden by the curve of the rockface and invisible to the unsuspecting glance, the eyes of a snow leopard staring straight at the photographer. The animal’s head merged so completely with the rock that it took a moment for the eye to make it out. Munier had his lens focused on the falcon’s plumage, utterly unaware that the leopard was watching him. It was only when studying his prints two months later that he noticed its presence. The infallible naturalist had let himself be duped. When he first showed me the photo, I had seen only the bird and my friend had to point to the leopard before I noticed what my eye would never have detected unprompted, since it sought only to detect an immediate presence. Once seen, I was struck by the presence of the animal every time I saw the photograph. The indistinguishable had become the obvious. The image concealed a valuable lesson. In nature, we are constantly being watched. Our eyes, on the other hand, are drawn to what is simple, they confirm what we already know. A child, being less conditioned than an adult, catches the mysteries of backgrounds and of hidden presences.

Our little Tibetan friends were not taken in. The fingers instantly pointed to the leopard. “Sa’u!” they shrieked. Not because their life in the mountains had honed their vision, but because their child’s eyes were not drawn to certainty. They explored the peripheries of the real.

Definition of the artist’s gaze: seeing big cats hidden behind ordinary screens.

From: Tesson, Sylvain

Title: The art of patience: seeking the snow leopard in Tibet