TASCHEN 25 - Special edition!

A fantastic account of the thrilling wildness

Eye to Eye, the first personal portfolio by master photographer Frans Lanting, presents an extraordinary collection of animal images by an award-winning photographer and naturalist who "has set the standards for a whole generation of wildlife photographers," according to the BBC.

More than 140 photographs, made over a period of twenty years, reveal the unique personal aesthetic Frans Lanting brings to wildlife photography, as well as the startling new perspective on animals his images provoke. In a review of his work The New York Times states, "Mr. Lanting"s photographs take creatures that have become ordinary and familiar and transform them into haunting new visions."

This book"s exquisite images are accompanied by personal stories and observations from a lifetime of working with wild animals around the world, ranging from orangutans in the rain forests of Borneo to emperor penguins in Antarctica. More than 70 species are represented in this astonishing portrait gallery celebrating the diversity of life on earth.

Frans Lanting does not seek in these encounters the beauty traditionally revered by wildlife photographers: "The perfection I seek in my photographic compositions is a means to show the strength and dignity of animals in nature." Frans Lanting"s work has been lauded by designers as art, by biologists as science, and by others as a new vision of the relationship between animals and people - one that challenges us to look animals in the eye and see ourselves.

About the photographer:
Dutch-born Frans Lanting has been hailed as one of the great nature photographers of our time. For the past two decades he has documented wildlife and our relationship with nature in environments from the Amazon to Antarctica. Exhibits of his photographs have been shown at major museums in Paris, Milan, Tokyo, New York, Madrid, and Amsterdam.

About the editor:
Christine Eckstrom is a writer and TV producer whose work has appeared in National Geographic, Audubon, and International Wildlife. Her feature story "The Last Real Africa" won a 2007 Lowell Thomas Award for Best Magazine Article on Foreign Travel from the Society of American Travel Writers. She is also the author of Forgotten Edens: Exploring the World"s Wild Places (1993). She collaborates with husband Frans Lanting from their home base in California.