Chained Elephant
Patrick Brown
From Trading to Extinction
Chitwan National Park, Nepal, 2005
A large bull elephant sits with its leg chained. The 50 year old animal has killed five mahouts (handlers) in its lifetime. Elephants are used by soldiers to patrol the park in their hunt for animal poachers. Tens of thousands of animals are illegally captured every year for international trade. Some are exported as pets, or their body parts are used for decoration, or for medicinal and magical purposes. According to Cites - the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species - more than 22,000 elephants were slaughtered for their tusks in 2012. Small-time local poachers are caught and jailed, but more powerful, organized traffickers often operate unhindered due to official corruption and inertia.
Asian wildlife, the focus of Patrick Brown’s work on the trade, is being plundered and trafficked on an unprecedented scale. It is estimated that wildlife traders export 25,000 to 30,000 primates every year, along with millions of birds, reptiles and tropical fish. According to the UK government, the illegal wildlife industry is worth up to £17bn each year, and it is growing. Rhino horns can sell for up to £40,000 ($65,000) per kg, making it more expensive than gold. Wildlife trafficking is thought to be the third most valuable illegal trade in the world, after drugs and weapons, with import and export of endangered species often traveling via the same routes.
Specification
Patrick Brown
Patrick Brown has lived and worked in Thailand for nearly 20 years, documenting critical issues across the Asia region often under-reported by the mainstream media. His work on the illegal trade in endangered animals won a World Press Photo Award in 2004 and Patrick continued working on the project for the next decade, covering its dealers, stockpiles, trafficking routes and markets, before publishing the book ‘Trading to Extinction’ in 2014.
In 2019 he published ‘No Place On Earth’ a series of portraits of and conversations with survivors of the massacres of Rohingya villages perpetrated in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State in 2017. The massacres were described by a human rights official at the UN as ‘a textbook example of ethnic cleansing’.
Patrick’s work has been exhibited at the International Centre of Photography in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo, and Visa pour l’Image in France and is held in private collections.
Your Print
When will I receive my print?
We produce prints in a batch every two weeks. Shipping can take up to one week in the UK, and two to three weeks internationally. Orders should be received within 3-5 weeks depending on your location.
What will I receive?
Your print will be posted flat, in a protective sleeve, to avoid damage or curling in transit. Prints come with a Panos Prints provenance certificate with background information about the image and the photographer.
The paper is A4 sized, the image will be smaller than A4 with a white border around it - see Image Specification for exact image size. Borders will be laid out as demonstrated by the print images on the site. We do not provide framing services and images of framed prints are only meant to be illustrative.
Print Care
Paper and ink
We print on Hahnemuhle Baryta FB, an archival fibre based 350gsm fine art paper. It is a bright white paper with a traditional character finish and heavy weighting. This paper has long been the industry standard paper for digital printing.
What is a giclée print?
Giclée comes from French and literally means ‘squirt’, referring to the spray of very fine drops of ink that produce an inkjet print. We print with archival paper and pigment inks to the accepted standards of fine art giclee printing found within the collectors market. Prints should last over a hundred years and with care longer than this. Avoiding extremes of light, heat and humidity will help prolong the life of your print.