11.17.09: Cyril Christo & Marie Wilkinson - Walking Thunder

They're the last individuals" Romain Gary wrote in his magnum opus The Roots of Heaven in 1956. Today, more than twenty years after the 1989 ivory ban, the elephant population is crumbling under the menace of trophy hunters, collectors and poachers who are ransacking the last great herds of the family of Abu for trinkets. Down from 1 million strong in the early 1980's the numbers have dwindled to only 400,000. Can future generations imagine a world without elephants? Within less than a generation the great herds could be gone due to the vanity of curiosity seekers in Asia. It is one of the signature events in biological history. Humanity now walks a tightrope in relation to existence. What happens to the elephant happens to us.

WALKING THUNDER In the Footsteps of the African Elephant is the first black and white book of its kind dedicated entirely to a single species in the wild. For the Maasai, the elephant represented a model for human society. For the Samburu, the elephant is a totem they have revered for centuries. WALKING THUNDER is a visual and poetic alarm call from both the Western and Indigenous perspective that sees in the elephant, our peer, a central pillar of existence. Beneath their skin, their minds and ours are inextricably linked. Their future is our fate. WALKING THUNDER is not merely a wildlife book, it is a testament and manifesto to the future of the elephant and humanity's relationship to the biosphere.