Photo report by Andrey Pavlov: the secret life of the ant proletariat

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

“They are ants! And they live among us. Or do we live among them? This question was asked by Bernard Werber when he wrote his famous trilogy about ants. Perhaps the best illustration of it could be the photographs of Andrei Pavlov. The Russian photo artist managed to capture the working life of these amazing insects, to see the fantastic world in an inconspicuous anthill.

Seven years ago, Andrei Pavlov received a serious spinal injury and remained motionless for a long time. It was then that he became interested in the study of ant civilization: he read books about their lifestyle, habits and distribution of "roles" in the ant community. Of course, he was especially interested in showing concern for the weak: children, the elderly, the disabled. The ant civilization, which has existed for more than 150 million years and is constantly adapting to the processes of evolution, amazed the photographer.

Having studied the life of insects from books, the photographer set out to create a series of pictures that would tell about these little hard workers. It is not for nothing that the people say: "The ant is small, but it digs mountains." To capture the entire workflow, it was necessary to first trace the main routes, and then place the lights and backgrounds in the right places.

Macro photography is a rather painstaking process, but Andrey spared no time on it. Ants are well trained, so the photographer attracted the attention of one of the insects, taught him a certain trick, and soon his relatives also repeated simple actions. It took three years to create a collection of photographs, but the result exceeded all expectations!

Note that this is not the first time that ants become “photo models”. British scientist and artist Mohamed Babu was able to paint ants, he created a series of amazing photographs "Tasting the rainbow", in which gray and nondescript insects delight the eye with all the colors of the rainbow. And designer Hugh Hayden created the picturesque Art-Farm (instead of Ant-Farm) by putting hardworking insects inside the paintings!