A Journey Through Time

The LIfe Project consists of a multimedia orchestral performance (LIFE Music) by Philip Glass, a traveling exhibition (LIFE Exhibits), a large-format photographic book (LIFE Book) by Frans Lanting, and this website, Life Through Time.

The photographer, Frans Lanting, spent five years traveling the world to find places that represented moments in Earth's history.

When I first experienced the video slideshow of Frans Lanting's LIFE: A Journey Through Time (which you can see below), I was blown away! I had been studying evolutionary biology and this 20-minute piece of art outlined the spectacular evolution of life on earth. Through Lanting's photographs and text combined with the orchestral music of Philip Glass, we gain a renewed sense of awe and wonder about life itself.

After that, I had to buy the book.

"The earth was born of fire." Lanting visits the smoking volcano Pu'u 'O'o on the Big Island of Hawaii to represent earth's beginnings 4.5 billion years ago. He needs to wear a respirator while photographing and cannot stay there long.

Lanting visited Twilight, Australia to photograph stromatolites - living reefs built by single-celled organisms called cyanobacteria. We owe our lives to cyanobacteria. Three billion years ago the earth had virtually no oxygen. Cyanobacteria were the first to use the process of photosynthesis to create energy, giving off oxygen as a result.

Lanting visited Delaware Bay to witness thousands of horseshoe crabs emerge from the sea to spawn. The ancestors of horseshoe crabs adapted so that they could take advantage of the opportunities on land for spawning.

Lanting visits the Galapagos Islands to photograph giant tortoises. These tortoises are reminiscent of the large reptiles from this time. These were cold-blooded animals that eventually gave way to warm-blooded ones. These giant tortoises survive in places like the Galapagos because there are no mammals native to the place.

Giant Tortoise Photo Link

Lanting visits the Hawaiian Leeward Islands to photograph frigatebirds and albatrosses flying. He explains that reptiles first developed the ability to fly. Maybe this ability allowed them to survive the asteroid that caused the demise of the dinosaurs.

Photo Link for Albatross

Lanting photographs elephants and impalas in Botswana. He says that elephants symbolize the Pleistocene era, from 1.8 million years ago to 10,000 years ago. Elephants ruled until humans moved out of Africa around 70,000 years ago.

Image: Baby by Thomas Hawk, on Flickr

Lanting opens this section with an aerial view of Greenland, while flying from his home of birth in the Netherlands to California, where he lives now. He notes that life has spread everywhere on earth now and is a force in its own right.