Painted Elephants, Jaipur, India, 1996

Photograph by Cary Wolinsky

A pair of gaily painted domesticated elephants regard one another in a Jaipur park in India.

Asian elephants have been domesticated for thousands of years. Used primarily for ornament and entertainment today, domesticated elephants have been used for moving cargo, felling trees, transporting caravans, and even waging war in centuries past.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, “The Quest for Color,” July 1999, National Geographic magazine)