THESE fearsome pincers are no B-movie prop. Long before David Attenborough brought the natural world to UK television screens, Jean Painlev茅 was sharing his own passion for marine life with French audiences through films and photographs.
After studying biology at the Sorbonne, Painlev茅 set up a studio on the coast of Brittany in 1925, where he used microscopes to capture close-ups of crabs, octopuses and sea urchins that belie their true size. Admired by many on the Paris avant-garde art scene, Painlev茅 showed that the natural world was a source of images and tales just as bizarre and shocking as anything Dada and surrealism could offer.
Advertisement
Painlev茅 was also a pioneer of underwater photography, encasing his camera in a rudimentary waterproof box (pictured below) to make films such as 尝鈥橦颈辫辫辞肠补尘辫别 (The Seahorse). He didn鈥檛 shy away from using anthropomorphism and humour to help his audience relate to the lives of animals, describing, for example, the labour pains of the male seahorse, the courtship rituals of the octopus and the vanity of a crab. He also championed the use of film in scientific research.
By the time he died in 1989, Painlev茅 had made more than 200 films in a career spanning half a century. His work is the subject of an exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK, until 4 June.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淪carily good in claws-up鈥�
