If you visit St Stephen's Green this month you won't be able to miss 100 breathtaking prints by the renowned wildlife photographer Steve Bloom, writes Rosita Boland
Anyone walking through St Stephen's Green over the past couple of weeks must have been temporarily disorientated by where they were: Dublin's beloved park, its zoo or somewhere else entirely? A hundred large photographs of animals and remote parts of the world are scattered throughout the green. A row of lions crouch to drink over here; over there, an ice-breaker carves a tiny passage through the frozen Antarctic Ocean; behind the playground, elephants swim underwater; and the scales surrounding the giant blown-up eye of a Madagascan chameleon could be some tiled treasure of Gaudí's.
Step out from behind a tree these days in the green and, as if you were in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, eyes follow your every movement. Everywhere you look, eyes are looking back at you. They belong to snow monkeys, polar bears, pandas, impala, lemurs, zebras, hippos, wildebeest, macaws and orang-utans.
The photographs make up Spirit of the Wild, an exhibition that has been shown in different versions in Oslo, Moscow, Copenhagen, Brussels and Birmingham. (The pictures' stands have downlighters for 24-hour viewing, but these won't be used in Dublin. Perhaps the show's sponsors, BDO Simpson Xavier and Harcourt Developments, were mindful of the vandalism to the fibreglass cattle of CowParade, the outdoor exhibition that came to Dublin in 2003. In any event, the prints are staying behind the protective rails of the green, its gates locked at sundown.)
They were taken by Steve Bloom, a South African-born photographer, over 12 years. The 54-year-old moved to England in the 1970s but returned to Africa on a photographic safari some 15 years ago. Although he had worked as a photographer in the past, and also in graphic design, he had never focused on photographing animals before. The safari changed his career direction.
Speaking by phone from his home in the English county of Kent, Bloom says he wanted to highlight the fragility of the environments in which these animals lived.
He has since published several highly praised books of photography, with his most recurring subject being the elephant. Some of his most striking images are those taken underwater, from below, of an elephant swimming in the azure-bright Andaman Sea - wonderful juxtapositions of weight and weightlessness, of light and airlessness. There are several pictures of the elephant - always the same one - from different angles. It took Bloom three trips to the Andaman Islands, over a year, to get the photographs. He had to wait by the water's edge, sometimes for days, until the elephant decided it wanted to cool off.
Some of the other images, such as those of the pandas in the Dublin exhibition, were shot in reserves in China. Bloom admits this can be an ethical dilemma for a photographer whose speciality is wildlife. How close to the subject do you go without stressing and disturbing endangered animals? He says he decided to photograph certain animals in game reserves as a result.
There are images that will make everyone who walks through the green between now and October 7th wonder: "How did he get that shot?" There is a mesmeric photograph of two bald eagles flying above Alaska, looking as if they're about to rip each other apart. How did Bloom get the shot, and what happened next? He was visiting a friend who threw out food for eagles that hung high and unseen in the air near her house. When she threw the food they plummeted down to pounce on it - not, in fact, on each other. Bloom was waiting with his camera.
Many of the photographs have explanations of their origins and of the animals' environments. There is also a 15-minute film showing on the first floor of Stephen's Green Shopping Centre, with footage from some of Bloom's shoots, and an interview with him. "People say I must be very patient, to wait and watch for so long," he says. "But it's more a fear of failure. You have to come back with the picture."
Spirit of the Wild is at St Stephen's Green, Dublin, until October 7th. Call 01-4700516 or see www.spiritofthewildexhibition.com or www.stevebloom.com