The rare, bizarre or beautiful of our wilds
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With the computer screen rapidly replacing the printed page as the medium from which we derive our information and entertainment, one would have thought the days of the tea-table book (I regret I am no longer permitted to mention the alternate beverage) were over. But one would be mistaken. Books have carved for themselves a niche that is going to be hard for the e-world of smoke and mirrors to dislodge. Unlike the fleeting image on your screen or that impossible-to-find file in your hard drive, books are permanently visible physical objects to which one can turn again and again. Whether on your tea-table or your bookshelf, you can go back to them year after year—as indeed some of the four-century old books in my library attest. And it’s impossible to know the fate of the files on your hard-drive just four years from now, let alone four centuries.
Vimukthi Weeratunga
With that bit of philosophy out of the way, I urge you to consider investing in ‘Living Free’, a compilation of (mainly) Sri Lankan wildlife photographs by two of the country’s best-known shutterbugs, Chitral Jayatilake and Vimukthi Weeratunga. Both were celebrated photographers already in the Kodachrome Era, and have since then published several books apiece on Sri Lanka’s fauna, flora and natural landscapes. In ‘Living Free’ they combine forces to present their best work, most of it never previously published, all of it exceedingly memorable.
The 196 pages of ‘Living Free’ are crammed full of fascinating animal portraits, ranging from tiny insects to Blue Whales. Printed on beautiful satin-finish large-format paper (33×24 cm) and elegantly bound in Singapore, the book is easily the best work published by either author to date—and goodness knows they have produced some beautiful volumes in the past.The selection of subjects is weighted strongly towards the rare and the endemic (for example, a gorgeous pair of Serendib Scops Owls), though some exceptionally artistic images of more common subjects help show off the photographers’ flair. The chapter on cats, with several photos in the award-winning class, was easily my favourite, with that on Horton Plains not far behind. But it is impossible to point, except for reasons of personal preference or prejudice, to oases of excellence in a book that is clearly in the ‘best-in-class’ category.
Chitral Jayatilake
‘Living Free’ is easily the best book of wildlife imagery to come out of Sri Lanka in several years. Few of us would aspire merely to glimpse most of the creatures and places illustrated in this volume, let alone photograph them so beautifully. If you’re a visitor to Sri Lanka, this is the book you need to take home with you, if only to remind you what to look for when you return. If you live here, what more apt a celebration could there be of just how lucky you are?
Above all, ‘Living Free’ reminds us just how much there is left to see in this over-crowded island. Some of these sights, such as the Blue Whales photographed from the air or the masses of Large Crested Terns on the Adam’s Bridge cays, must necessarily remain the restricted preserve of the privileged few. Like Antarctica, to open these to general tourism would spell disaster. But for the rest of it, each creature or landscape offers fresh inducement to travel into the wild to experience the luxuriance of Sri Lanka’s biodiversity. Whether it’s rare, bizarre or beautiful, it is always worth seeing.
You would do yourself well to buy a copy of ‘Living Free’. Thanks to generous sponsorship by DIMO, the book is being sold at a very affordable price. It is most certainly in line to become the best book to come out of Sri Lanka this year.
| Book facts | |
| Living Free-by Chitral Jayatilake and Vimukthi Weeratunga Reviewed by Rohan Pethiyagoda |
Guests at the book launch. Pix by Indika Handuwala