y love of African animals, in particular elephants, dates back to when I was three or four years old, growing up in Milan in a house full of old nature books. When I was six, my parents took me on my first safari in Kenya – I cried on the plane home, feeling I was being torn away from the savanna I'd dreamed of, somewhere I really loved. But for the past 20 years, that's where I've lived, guiding photographers on the Maasai Mara National Reserve and elsewhere in Africa.

I've spent time photographing other animals, especially big cats, but elephants are still my favourite subject. They have this extraordinary presence, dominating the landscape and making it come alive. I love to follow them in different habitats. They are extremely adaptable – in Kenya they're associated with the savanna and acacia woodland, and they can also live in extremely arid areas, such as the deserts of Namibia, where this photograph was taken.

I was there last September, guiding a group of photographers. We had been following a group of elephants walking along a dry riverbed as night fell. Even though there is no water in these rivers, they retain some vegetation and act as a lifeline for the elephants, who follow them from the hills in the west towards the Atlantic Ocean.

Because it's a sandy river, it was quite easy to follow their tracks until we found them again the next day. But among the tracks was something quite unusual, like a dragging mark. Sometimes bull elephants, when they're full of testosterone, will do crazy things to demonstrate their power and intimidate their opponents – I'd seen one lift a log before, and thought perhaps that's what was being dragged.

We drove on until we found them, and that's when I realised one of the females was carrying a baby. When people see this picture, they sometimes think it's of a young elephant hugging its mother, but in fact the calf is dead and the leg you can't see is wedged between the adult's tusk and trunk. As I took this photograph, another elephant was approaching and the female swung her head so the baby was lifted up and out of its way. I have other photographs that make the reading of the scene more straightforward, but this one leaves the interpretation open and adds a layer of mystery.

We followed the herd for several hours, and the female carried the calf for the entire time, only putting it down so she could feed before picking it up and continuing on her way. She was still carrying it when we last saw her – eventually the elephants started climbing into some rocky hills where we couldn't follow.

I've since read that 17 out of the 19 calves born in that area during the past four years have not made it. There's clearly a problem, but researchers aren't yet clear why this is happening. What has come to light, however, is that the elephant carrying the calf was not its mother, as I had assumed. Her mammary glands were not swollen as they would have been if she'd recently given birth, and the researchers were able to identify her as a female who had a miscarriage a couple of years before, and had since been seen picking up the stillborn calves of other mothers. In a sense, that makes the image even more deep and profound, as it implies that she perhaps hasn't moved past that trauma.

Most of my elephant photographs are in black and white. Sometimes I use colour – in Tsavo, Kenya, elephants are often covered in red earth, which makes for a striking contrast against green vegetation, and in Etosha, Namibia, there's a place where they visit a waterhole full of white clay and end up looking like ghosts. But black and white highlights the texture of elephants' skin, and also, as here, removes distracting elements and exposes emotion in a more straightforward way.

This is a painful image to look at, but at the same time it reveals so much of the psychology of elephants, their interior complexity, personality and feelings. Here we see a creature that feels just as much as we do, that experiences the same grief at losing a baby, the same sense of not wanting to let it go. My hope is that photographs like this help people realise how important it is to coexist peacefully and respectfully with animals that look different to us on the outside, but inside are very similar.

This image is the adult grand title winner of Wildlife Photographer of the Year. The exhibition is at the Natural History Museum, London, until 11 July 2027.

Milan, Italy, 1975. Moved to Kenya in 2002
High point: Probably this award, and the three books I published
Top tip: Explore ways to convey emotions to the viewer through your photographs, carefully choosing light, atmosphere, shooting angle, framing, backgrounds, and so on