A baby elephant disappears beneath its mother’s body. It is only a few weeks old, moving with a herd through the forest patches of Kaziranga National Park in Assam. For the calf, the enormous body beside it is shelter, safety and the centre of its small world.
In another frame, the baby reaches out to touch its mother. Around them, elephants communicate through touch, trunks brushing against one another as the herd pauses to assess the strangers watching them.
For Sangita Iyer, these images are evidence of a life we often fail to see.
For more than a decade, the National Geographic Explorer, wildlife filmmaker and founding executive director of the Voice for Asian Elephants Society has trained her camera on India’s elephants, in forests, in human-dominated landscapes and in captivity.
A weeks-old calf finds shelter beneath its mother
For Iyer, conservation begins with how we see the animal in the first place.
On World Photography Day, The Better India speaks with the filmmaker about a question that has shaped much of her work and invites all of us to consider: Can a photograph capture an elephant’s majesty and make us care enough to help save one?
Her answer lies in the images she has taken.
The chained elephant she remembered from childhood
Iyer’s relationship with elephants began long before she became a filmmaker.
She was three years old when her grandmother took her to a temple in Palakkad, Kerala. There, she saw a bull elephant. “Magnificent”, she remembers, but chained.
What stayed with her was something she felt others around her had not noticed: the elephant’s distress.
The experience would remain with her for years.
Later, after more than two decades of working as a videographer, Iyer began documenting India’s captive elephants in 2013. It was then, she says, that the camera became more than an instrument for recording. It became a formidable witness.
“I’ve been a videographer for more than 20 years, always believing that sights, sounds and images have the power to shape public perception,” she says. “But in 2013, when I began documenting India’s temple elephants, the camera became something more — a witness.”
What she encountered pushed her work in a new direction.
Her documentary on captive elephants in India received 13 international film festival awards.
Iyer wanted her stories to place elephants’ emotional lives at the centre, alongside their existence as an endangered species and their place in India’s cultural landscape. The goal was to show what was happening to elephants and ask what the viewer could recognise in them.
This World Elephant Day, may the world come together to protect these majestic beings, realizing that our own survival depends on that of the elephants. Let’s join hands to save their forests and prevent human induced fires. 🔥 Let’s Save Their Home!
OM Ganeshaya Namah! 🐘 https://t.co/vk8FvsbVou
— 🇨🇦 🐘Sangita🐘 Elephant 🐘 Iyer 🇨🇦🐘🌻 (@Sangita4eles) August 12, 2026
A mother protecting a calf.
A herd deciding whether it is safe to move.
An elephant seeking comfort through touch.
An animal choosing not to use its strength, even when it could.
“Since then, I’ve used visual storytelling to reveal elephants not simply as a species to be saved, but as individuals with families, relationships, emotions and societies of their own,” she says. “Once we truly see them, it becomes much harder to look away.”
It was hard to witness this while I was filming this poor elephant, Madhavan. https://t.co/UjYwZyo9MK
— 🇨🇦 🐘Sangita🐘 Elephant 🐘 Iyer 🇨🇦🐘🌻 (@Sangita4eles) May 30, 2026
What an elephant family photo can reveal
In 2019, Iyer photographed wild elephants in Kaziranga National Park.
Some of the images that remain most meaningful to her capture small, intimate moments.
One shows a newborn calf touching its mother as the herd moves through the lush vegetation. Another captures the baby walking beneath her body, surrounded by the protection of the herd.
In another moment, a pregnant matriarch stands at the front while the rest of the herd waits behind her. She appears to assess the surroundings before deciding whether it is safe to cross.
Then there are the photographs of touch.
Elephants use tactile communication as part of their social lives, and Iyer’s images show trunks reaching towards one another as members of a herd interact. In one scene, she recalls, the group seemed to be assessing the unfamiliar humans nearby while remaining close to the youngest member.
Elephants use touch to stay connected, reaching out with their trunks in a herd.
“It’s almost impossible to choose one photograph that captures the complex emotional life of Asian elephants,” she says.
Iyer believes that the emotional world of an elephant cannot be contained in one image. But a photograph can offer an entry point. “A baby reaching out to touch its mother reveals the instinctive need for comfort,” she says. “Another walking beneath her enormous body is completely enveloped in safety — his mother is his shelter, his security, his entire world.”
It is a scene that changes depending on who is looking.
A wildlife enthusiast may see a rare sighting. A photographer may notice composition and light. A parent may see something immediately familiar.
That ability to reach people through their own experiences is where photography becomes useful, Iyer believes.
A photograph does not need a common language. It can travel across borders and enter homes far from the forest where it was taken. It can introduce someone to an animal they may never encounter and, in doing so, narrow the distance between “wildlife” and the viewer.
The elephants who walked away
Some encounters in the forest carried real danger.
Iyer recalls filming a bull elephant in musth, a period associated with heightened reproductive activity and hormonal changes in male elephants. He was searching for a mate when her team encountered him.
“He was livid that we interrupted his search,” she recalls. The elephant mock-charged.
A bull elephant in musth during one of Iyer’s encounters in the wild
Later, they encountered a younger bull who reacted with similar anger.
“And then,” Iyer says, “they walked away.”
The encounters stayed with her.
“We encountered a magnificent bull in musth, his eyes seemingly spitting fire, and later a younger bull equally furious at our presence. Both threatened us,” she says.
“But they walked away. They had the power to hurt us, but chose restraint.”
For Iyer, that restraint revealed another side of the animals she had been documenting.
Elephants can be powerful, unpredictable and dangerous. They can also display care, restraint and highly developed social behaviour. Capturing that complexity, she believes, is part of responsible wildlife storytelling.
“In a world where human anger can escalate into devastating wars, perhaps we should have the humility to recognise that elephants still have something to teach us,” Iyer says
Beyond the beautiful portrait
The challenge, she says, is to resist making wildlife photography only about the beautiful image.
A striking portrait may make someone pause while scrolling. But the photograph that stays with a person often contains a larger story.
Who is this animal? Who are they connected to? What landscape do they need to survive? What happens when that landscape changes?
And what can people do differently?
For Iyer, that means turning the camera towards the life surrounding the frame, rather than focusing on the animal as a striking subject alone.
“Tell their stories, not ours,” she says. “Look beyond the beautiful portrait. Capture their relationships, families, societies, struggles and the landscapes they depend upon.”
The photograph, then, becomes a way of helping the viewer understand what is at stake for the animal they are looking at.
This thinking has shaped her work beyond individual photographs.
Her documentary, Gods in Shackles, which examines the lives of captive elephants in India, went on to receive 13 international film festival awards, including three for Best Feature Documentary, and was nominated at the United Nations General Assembly.
Watch this short 🎞️ film
🎥 and judge for yourself how empathic and caring elephants are. This is my beloved Lakshmi. I’ve been 🚫 from seeing her after I exposed her horrifying abuse in my UN nominated and multi award winning film, Gods in Shackles, streaming for free on @JVMhttps://t.co/PHltClqBYL
— 🇨🇦 🐘Sangita🐘 Elephant 🐘 Iyer 🇨🇦🐘🌻 (@Sangita4eles) March 28, 2026
Supported by the National Geographic Society, Iyer also created Asian Elephants 101, a 26-part documentary series exploring the intelligence, emotions, culture and conservation of Asian elephants. The series premiered across Nat Geo Wild, National Geographic TV India and National Geographic’s digital platforms, bringing science-based conversations about elephant conservation to audiences beyond the places where these animals live.
Her recent National Geographic Society-supported research has also explored how environmental education can build empathy and help people coexist with wildlife.
For Iyer, this matters because facts alone do not always create a connection. People may know that elephants are endangered, understand the threats they face and be aware of the laws meant to protect them. But an individual story can make that knowledge feel immediate and personal.
That way of seeing the world began with the women who shaped Iyer.
The women who shaped the frame
Iyer traces that sense of purpose to two women she calls her “extraordinary matriarchs”.
The first was her mother, who shaped her values early.
She rose through the ranks to become an Income Tax Officer in the 1970s, at a time when women were still fighting to be recognised in many professional spaces. Iyer remembers her mother’s courage, determination and willingness to challenge powerful people.
“She had the audacity to raid the homes of powerful people in the middle of the night and hold them accountable,” Iyer says.
The second was primatologist and conservationist Dr Jane Goodall.
Goodall wrote the foreword to Iyer’s literary award-winning book, Gods in Shackles: What Elephants Can Teach Us About Empathy, Resilience and Freedom.
As a university student in India, Iyer would study Goodall’s photographs and hope that she might one day meet the woman whose work had changed the way the world understood chimpanzees.
Years later, that connection became real.
Goodall watched Gods in Shackles, offered an endorsement and later wrote the foreword to Iyer’s literary award-winning book, Gods in Shackles: What Elephants Can Teach Us About Empathy, Resilience and Freedom.
Nearly 12 years after Iyer began receiving Goodall’s support, the two finally met in Toronto.
“I couldn’t stop crying,” Iyer says. “The university girl from India had finally met the woman who taught her to channel her gifts and talents towards something larger than herself, the collective good.”
Goodall’s death, she says, has left a void that she still feels deeply.
The lesson remains central to her work: whatever one’s skill, it can be directed towards something beyond oneself.
For Iyer, the camera became that skill.
Can one image change anything?
Perhaps not on its own. A photograph cannot restore a forest, prevent an accident or resolve the complex challenges that arise when people and elephants share shrinking landscapes.
A photograph can change the starting point.
It can make a viewer pause before dismissing an elephant as a number in a conservation report. It can show a calf looking for its mother. A matriarch deciding when it is safe to move.
A herd communicating through touch.
A bull walking away.
And, sometimes, it can reveal suffering that had remained outside the public frame.
“The most powerful wildlife image isn’t simply one that makes people stop and look. It makes them feel, understand, and ultimately care enough to act.”
