Published by the National Geographic Society, Visions of Paradise is a glorious collection of black and white and color photographs taken all over the world based on editor Bronwen Latimer’s question, “where is heaven on Earth?”
The 88 participants submitted snapshots of the assignment that not only cover the obvious natural beauty of untarnished landscapes, such as Frans Lanting’s India 2001 shot of the Western Ghats, but, as Latimer explains, paradise can also be defined as “a moment in time that is lost forever,” which explains why the book opens with Christopher Anderson’s Cuba 2003, a simple image of a woman floating in a pool. It’s a bit of paradise that many people have access to, just floating along alone with your thoughts, a pleasant reminder that paradise can be both a place and a state of mind.
The photos feature persons, places, and things, both familiar and unrecognizable. They are accompanied by text that offers some explanation and insight from the photographers, which is needed at times to help decipher the images. The snaking arteries that make up the grand image of “mudflat remains of the Colorado River Delta near the Sea of Cortez” in Annie Griffiths Bels’s Mexico 1997 would surely have befuddled many a reader who wouldn’t have the opportunity to experience them from the same overhead vantage point.
While it doesn’t detract from any of the shots, some pictures don’t clearly exhibit their connotation of the word “paradise.” Chris Johns’ Botswana 1996 is an out-of-focus photo of “an elephant matriarch clash[ing] with an intruder [elephant] near the Chobe River in Chobe National Park” and the tension of the moment seems to contrast with the theme. Nina Berman’s North Dakota 2008 is a seemingly ordinary shot of streets in winter, but paradise for her is “a space that transports me beyond the physical…and carries me to a psychological place.”
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