Erivaleni The Transparent Leopard
Transparent grace, descending through the unseen light.
In the fading glow of twilight, a leopard descended from its marula tree with the quiet certainty of something born to shadows. Its body moved fluidly against the bark, each step deliberate, muscles coiled with the elegance of instinct. The air was thick with the scent of evening — dry grass, dust, and the faint metallic tang of the hunt completed hours before. Somewhere below, the faint trickle of water drew it closer to the riverbank. The moment was fleeting, but in that space between day and night, the leopard became more than a creature. It became a presence, yet transparent, elusive, and eternal.
View the Erivaleni Feature Short Reel
Erivaleni, meaning transparent in Tsonga, reimagines this moment through an altered lens. It’s a transformation of light, form, and perception. The original photograph, taken in the last breaths of dusk (see Goza), was a study in movement and restraint. Through an infrared interpretation, it becomes something more elemental, stripped of colour yet heightened in sensation. The branches flare white against the void, the leopard glows with ghostlike precision, and what was once camouflage turns luminous. This inversion of the visible world exposes what usually hides beneath: the delicate balance between predator and landscape, the dialogue between concealment and revelation.
Infrared photography has long been a realm of experimentation, a space where the ordinary is recast as extraordinary. Early pioneers like Robert Wood showed how unseen wavelengths could translate the familiar into dreamlike inversions showing how trees shimmered, skies darkened, and life itself seemed to vibrate in another register. Erivaleni draws from that tradition, using the infrared effect not as a novelty, but as a narrative. In this treatment, the leopard’s spotted coat becomes a constellation against the night, the marula’s trunk gleams like bone, and the entire scene feels as if viewed through memory rather than sight.
When this image was first created, the intention was to explore how perception changes when colour and contrast are reversed, when the world’s warmth is rendered in cold light. What began as a documentation of behaviour became an introspection on form and energy. The leopard is both emerging and dissolving, part of its tree yet distinct from it, both visible and vanishing. It challenges the viewer to see beyond recognition, to look not just at an animal, but through it. In this sense, transparency becomes more than a description; it becomes a philosophy.
A motion study (see reel), created from the original photograph, extends this theme further, as a visual echo that amplifies the descent and the quiet determination within it. The sequence, subtle yet deliberate, captures the flow of time suspended in a single breath. It’s a meditation on movement, not through the mechanics of animation, but through the suggestion of continuity — as if the leopard never stops descending, forever caught between branches and earth.
In the original dusk photograph, still visible in another post, the tones were rich and subdued, golden light filtering through marula leaves, the faint glint of eyes catching the sun’s retreat. In Erivaleni, that warmth is reinterpreted into stark clarity. The background collapses into pure black, stripping away distraction, leaving only essence. It’s both familiar and alien, a reawakening of what the eye cannot see but the imagination can.
There’s an underlying symbolism too. In African folklore, the leopard often embodies duality in the form of strength and silence, visibility and invisibility, the seen and the unseen. By rendering it through infrared stylisation, that duality becomes tangible. It stands as a metaphor for Africa itself: a land of immense vitality and contrast, constantly shifting between the visible and the mysterious.
Standing before Erivaleni in print, one senses this paradox: an image both rooted in nature and lifted into abstraction. The white tracery of branches recalls anatomical drawings; the leopard, etched in light, becomes the spirit of the landscape rather than its occupant. It invites contemplation rather than admiration, a stillness that echoes long after the gaze moves on.
For me, this image represents the quiet power of transformation. It illustrates how art can shift the ordinary into revelation. The infrared technique was never about altering reality, but about revealing another truth that coexists alongside it. Somewhere within that luminous inversion lies a question: what else in the world hides just beyond our visible reach?
Artistic Works Collection
The Artistic Works Collection explores photography beyond its literal bounds - transforming form, tone, and texture into meditations on perception. Each image in this collection revisits the world through an altered lens, exploring how the unseen can reveal deeper meaning within what we believe we know.
