Documentary lost caves of altamira crack#

Chauvet is littered with the bones of 12-foot-tall, 1,100-pound cave bears. Most impressively, at the time the painters were working in Chauvet they were not alone underground. ItвЂ™s easy to get disoriented and not know which way is out.

Even today caves are dangerous places-there are holes in the floor, tight squeezes, and no light. Reindeer, horses, lions, bulls, and rhinos move through that shadow world.Д¬hoosing to put those paintings underground might say something about the artworkвЂ™s importance to its creators. Curtains of rock reveal processions of animals, and as lights move-as surely flickering firelight would have-the animals come and go. The artists used irregularities in the cave wall in a highly sophisticated way, and I tried to accentuate that fact. Some of the power of the paintings is derived from where they are, deep inside the cave, surrounded by darkness. I wanted to photograph the paintings in a way that let the original artistsвЂ™ voice come through while also preserving the sense of what it is like to stand in front of that art. It also left me with a strong feeling of connection to those Paleolithic artists. That knowledge gave me a tremendous sense of responsibility. ItвЂ™s closed to all but a handful of researchers. I am the only non-scientific photographer to shoot Chauvet this decade. Preparing to photograph in Chauvet, I thought carefully about what my role should be. Except for a metal walkway installed to protect the cave floor, and a heavily monitored submarine door to keep out the curious, it remains exactly as it was in Paleolithic times.

Documentary lost caves of altamira crack#

Nothing entered and nothing changed until 1994 when three cavers shimmied through a tiny crack and rediscovered the chambers and their art. Twenty-two thousand years ago, the entrance that overlooked the ArdГЁche Gorge collapsed, sealing the cave. Entering Chauvet is like entering a time machine. It is a magic that no other form of communication can manage. The connection with the ancient artists is visceral. An abyss of time yawns between us, yet the images on the wall transcend time, erase barriers, and let those artists speak as clearly as if we were in the same room. The lives of those first European hunter-gatherers are so far removed from mine that they are unimaginable. Standing in front of a 35,000-year-old painting, every possible thing separates me from that painter.

Nothing has ever confirmed my faith in that like seeing the ancient art in the cave of Chauvet-Pont-dвЂ™Arc in ArdГЁche, France. Here, he chronicles his experience shooting some of the worldвЂ™s oldest cave art, under extremely challenging circumstances.ДЄt our core, people are visual communicators. Stephen Alvarez photographed the cave of Chauvet-Pont-dвЂ™Arc for the story вЂњThe Origins of ArtвЂќ that appears in the January 2015 issue of National Geographic magazine.