One Picture

SPECIFICATIONS:
Photographer: Larry Fink
Subject: Mating mantids
Camera: Mamiya C330 twin-lens reflex with 55mm Sekor lens and bellows for close-up work.
Film: Kodak Tri-X 120
Exposure: 1/30th of a second at f16 with handheld Vivitar 285 flash

On Wings and a Prayer
“I call this one ‘Two Lovers and the Sun,’ ” says photographer Larry Fink. The subject is a praying mantis pas de deux on a goldenrod stem, shot on his Pennsylvania farm. And it is quite uncharacteristic of his work, for Fink is famous (or notorious) for his candid black-and-white snapshots with a handheld flash of both celebrities and ordinary people. Critics call his pictures “thought-provoking social commentary” and compare him to Diane Arbus. But in the 1970s Fink spent three summers photographing a population explosion of mantids. “The females,” he recalls, “were getting fatter and fatter eating two males at once,” referring to their habit of devouring their mates during copulation. Lodima Press recently published Primal Elegance, a slender book with 14 reproductions of Fink’s mantis images.

Fink’s sticklike predators are probably either European (or praying) mantids or Chinese mantids, which are 2.5 to 3 inches long, including their wings. Both species were introduced to the Northeast in the 1890s. The Carolina mantid, our best-known native species, occurs in warmer climes. Some 20 different mantids are found in North America, while the worldwide total nudges 2,300 species that range in size from a half-inch to 10 inches. Mantids hang upside down from a plant, looking like a twig and lashing out with remarkable speed to nab other insects, small lizards, frogs, snakes, and rodents with their grasping, spiked forelegs. They even capture birds. On the Internet, you can find pictures from Pennsylvania showing a praying mantis devouring a male ruby-throated hummingbird!—Les Line