Internationally known photographer Ernest Haas treated a large Carpenter Center audience to a colored slide "fantasy" of the earth's creation last night.

Haas prefaced the 40-minute show with autobiographical anecdotes and a smattering of photographic theory. "The camera connects man with the two greatest abstracts--light and time," he said, adding that to define photography "would destroy its strength."

The slide sequence, composed of incidental shots from different assignments, depicts the four basic elements in medieval science--earth, air, fire and water. From shots of clouds and sea, Haas progressed to slides of birds and animals and ended with a shot of a giant human footprint.

Haas' work has been published in Life, and he has had his own exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.