Safari: A Photicular Book

Safari: A Photicular Book carries the Photicular technology into the African savanna: turn the page and the cheetah bounds, the lion charges, the African elephant snaps its ears. It is not digital animation or a conventional printing trick, but a system of precision lenticular lenses paired with four-color motion imagery, so that every spread behaves like a small 3D movie printed on paper.

Across 32 pages the book presents African animals in motion, with text by Carol Kaufmann explaining the size, behaviour and habitat of each species. Dan Kainen originated and developed the Photicular format, and his photography is the raw material behind the mechanism: the images were captured as sequences designed so that the sliding lens produces an illusion of continuous movement. The result can be read at two speeds, as an object of wonder to flip through and as a short natural-history profile to consult.

Published by Workman Publishing Company in 2012 in hardcover and a square 8.25 by 8.25 inch format, the volume became a bestseller and launched a series that went on to add ocean, dinosaurs, bugs and birds. It works just as well as a gift for a child as it does as a coffee-table book for anyone who enjoys wildlife photography: in both cases the promise is the same, watching animals move with no screen in between.