A caravan of 50 elephants attended a festival in Hongsa district, Xayaboury province last February, and was captured on film.
The stunning photos are now on display at T'Shop Lai Gallery behind Vat Inpeng in Vientiane .
An Australian photographer, Mr Paul Wager, has captured some wonderful elephant moments in his photos which take Vientiane gallery goers along with him to the Hongsa festival.
Mr Wager clearly appreciates the relationship between elephants and their mahouts. Interested people can view details of that relationship at the gallery until September 9.
“Visitors can enjoy interesting photos from the festival, which feature mahouts bringing their friends from the forest to perform for the crowd,” said the programme director of ElefantAsia, Mr Sebastien Duffillot, who opened the exhibition last week.
Most of the photos on display depict the life of elephants and mahouts “who live, eat and work together in the forest and love each other as friends and family members”, Mr Duffillot said.
To accompany the exhibition, the gallery has also opened a permanent display, called La Maison de l'Elephant (The Elephant House).
The “elephant resource centre” provides information on the biology of the elephant. It also explores the relationship between Buddhism and the elephant in Lao, English and French. It includes a multimedia library and a small boutique selling books and “elephant souvenirs”.
Visitors to the centre can view, among other things, a special seat in which people sit on the back of an elephant, and equipment used by mahouts in the course of their work Visitors can also enjoy a video of the Hongsa festival.
ElefantAsia, an organisation set up to conserve elephants in Laos , has created the centre on the third floor of the gallery, which is open to the public during working hours. ElefantAsia says it's concerned that the country, which used to be called “the land of a million elephants”, is now home to only about 2,000 pachyderms.
