Saturday, 02 March 2002 | Exhibit

The British Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibit has been in town for the past month, but I've let each weekend slip by without visiting, until today, the second-to-last day of the exhibit's tenure. The NC Museum of Natural Sciences is hosting the exhibit—prints of tubby elephant seals, surprised monkeys, curtains of red ants, and mossy trees—in a room sectioned off by glass doors and a cash register. Today the bulk of the museum was crowded with armies of kids, running and laughing and tugging on sleeves, restless from the day's steady rain. The exhibit itself was less busy, catering more to a crowd that paces itself and whispers. After looking at the first few prints, I stopped noticing the people around me anyway.

Of course the photos were impressive, but what made them exceptional were the stories behind them. Displayed on the wall just next to the prints were details about the number of hours the photographer waited in stillness, the animals' fascination with the camera or their disregard for it, the events that led up to the picture and the moments that followed, the disturbing statistics of destroyed habitats and endangered species, and, of course, f stops and shutter speeds and lens lengths. It made me want to travel to Africa take pictures of large, dangerous animals or (perhaps more realistically) walk in the woods and find a lizard to photograph, if only I were patient enough to wait for it.

I came home to find two pieces of mail with my name on it—one from the Defenders of Wildlife, and the other from The National Arbor Day Foundation—envelopes stuffed with pictures and long convincing arguments asking me to adopt a wolf and plant some trees. How did they know I would be going to a wildlife photography exhibit, and that I would be exceptionally soft and generous when I came home? Well, before I had the chance to write any checks, the clutch in my car performed a lightning-quick dramatic death, reminding me that my paycheck doesn't cover the expenses of my good intentions and barely covers my car's disintegration. Wow, a whole two weeks that my car has gone without getting its organs rearranged.

Last night's culture took place in a local art gallery and was much less conventional than wildlife photography in the museum. It involved two women, wearing paper jumpsuits, red-and-white striped socks, wigs, and goggles, who hung suspended from the ceiling in front of red-and-white painted bull's-eyes and smeared icing on each other's faces with long poles. Tonight it's blues.