Lauralouise Hendrix Student registration number: 0974854 [email protected] Master thesis Master Film and Photographic Studies Leiden University september 2012
The Animal Other Represented in Photography:
Comparative Research of the Animal and the Human Subject as Other
Supervisor: Dr. H.F. (Helen) Westgeest
Second reader:
Dhr. B. (Bas) Vroege
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Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Chapter 1: A Case Study From Early Photography: The Animal as Other Compared to Human Other as Dead. 10
1.1. Putting Drama In Diorama: The Animal Subject In Early Photography 11 1.1.1. Decoding Llewelynʼs representations of nature 14 1.1.2. Interpetation and temporality 17
1.2. Differentiating Photographic Death 18 1.2.1. Appearences of Post-Mortem photography 18 1.2.2. Three-dimensional representation and Photography 22
1.3. The dead animal and the dead human in early photography 27
Chapter 2: A Case Study From Wildlife Photography: The Animal as Other Compared to the Human Other as Cultural Other. 30
2.1. Hunting Photographers? 33 2.1.1. Hunting With The Camera 37 2.1.2. Point, Aim and Shoot 41
2.2. The Human Subject as Other in Colonial Photography 44 2.2.1. Colonial Photography as Conveyer of Truth 47 2.2.2. The Constructed Human Other and the Animal 50
2.3. Wildlife Photography as Colonial Photography. 53
Chapter 3: A Case Study From Documentary Photography: the Animal as Other Compared to the Human Other as Object of Voyeurism 55
3.1. Looking at Animals in the Zoo 58 3.1.1. Obvious Voyeurism in the Zoo 58 3.1.2. Unavoidable Voyeurism in the Zoo 60
3.2. Looking at Looking at Animals in the Zoo 64 3.2.1. Winograndʼs Photograph as Representing Itself 67 3.2.2. Winograndʼs Photograph as Generically Self Referential 70
3.3. Looking at an Exotic Dancer and Looking at that Act 72 3.3.1. The Difference That Makes a Difference 73 3.3.2. Privacy and Consent 74 3.3.3. Interchangeability 75
3.4. Voyeurism as Inevitabilaty 79
Conclusion 82
Illustrations 85
Bibliography 93
Endnotes 98
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Introduction
The earliest known images already have among them representations of
animals. In most prehistoric paintings in caves animals were represented, and one of
the first materials used to make these images was animal blood (Berger, p. 253).
Before photography, the animal subject had in common with the human subject, that
its representations were always mediated, and were based on a variety of direct
observation, memory, written descriptions, earlier representations and hear-say. This
resulted in an ʻinescapable subjectivityʼ that casted a ʻshadow of a doubtʼ over every
image according to film-critic André Bazin in his description of proto-photographic
images in “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” (Bazin, p. 6). A rather famous
example of how subjectivity was pivotal in the creation of a picture of an animal and
was influential for subsequential imagery depicting that same subject, can be found
in E.H. Gombrichʼs “Truth and the Stereotype: an Illusion Theory of Representation”
in Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (1960). It
concerns a woodcut made in 1515 by Albrecht Dürer (1471 – 1528) which depicts a
Rhinoceros (fig. 1 ). For us, as present-day viewers it is immediately clear that this
animal is not a ʻtruthfulʼ rendering of the majestic African colossus that we have
come to know; yet most of us only know this animal through photographs and nature
documentaries. Dürer based his rhinoceros on a single sketch that had been made
in Lisbon, based on an actual, yet deceased species. It was sent to a merchant in
Nuremberg and was obtained there by Dürer (Luz, p. 96). According to Gombrich,
Dürer filled in the blanks in his knowledge about the animal with his own imagination,
he even goes so far as to say that Dürer based his rhinoceros on his supposed
knowledge of “…the most famous of exotic beasts, the dragon whit its armored body
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(Gombrich, p. 79).” Whether or not this is the case is open to speculation, it is
however evident that Dürerʼs woodcut has served as the basis for the representation
of the rhinoceros in western imagery up to the beginning of the eighteenth century
(Gombrich, p. 80 - Luz, p. 96) (fig. 2). What Gombrich is trying to say with this
anecdote is that in image-making, preconceived ideas, existing imagery and
expectation are the main pillars on which the ultimate image is built. In Dürerʼs case
the original subject was never seen, but even in cases when the subject is available
the image is mainly guided and influenced by the aforementioned notions (Gombrich,
p. 61). Gombrich is in this text mainly referencing to painting and drawing, however,
as we shall see, this ambiguity he speaks of, that exists in imagery representing
reality, between observation and premeditation, does not disappear with the
introduction of the objective medium that photography supposedly would be when it
was first introduced, especially when it concerns the animal subject.
Animals have been photographed since the invention of the photographic
medium, and the huge presence of animals as a subject in contemporary
photography cannot be denied. However, the attention given to the animal subject in
photographic theory comes across as inversely proportionate (Grady and Mechling,
p. 92, Burt, p. 293) The animal subject, when not ignored completely, is only slightly
touched upon or used as an illustration, or classified with either the human subject or
with lifeless objects, in the bulk of theoretic texts that appeared after two publications
that were highly influential in the field of photographic theory and jump-started
postmodern discussions on photography: Susan Sontagʼs On Photography (1977)
and Roland Barthesʼ Le Chambre Claire (1977).1 These texts focus on the
functioning and relevance of the medium for and in human society. The social impact
of the photographic act and medium on humans is discussed, whereas the animal
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subject is only addressed upon when discussing wildlife photography and/or
environmental issues. Matthew Brower argues that the neglect of the animal subject
in photography “… was a key part of the foundation of aesthetic modernism [which
regards]…animal imagery as sentimental, reactionary and nostalgic (Brower, p. xxi).”
The animal subject in art-history focussing on other media like painting and drawing
is represented, analyzing the animals as symbol or metaphor and through issues
dealing with anthropomorphism. These theories however can only partly be applied
within photographic theory since, opposed to other visual media, the actual presence
of an animal is always needed for a photograph, it actually ʻhad to be thereʼ in that
specific situation when the photograph was made. Art-historian John Berger for
example, did deal with the act of looking at animals and their visibility in human
culture in his highly influential text: “Why Look At Animals?” (1980). Berger, however,
only once mentions photography and does not analyze the animal subject
specifically when it concerns its representation in photography, nor its differences or
similarities to the human subject in this aspect (Berger, p. 257). Berger does offer a
hint, by positioning the animal subject in a theoretical halfway point, to why
examining the animal subject in photography could be of interest : “Animals are born,
are sentient, and are mortal. In these things they resemble men. In their superficial
anatomy…in their habits, in their time, in their physical capacities, they differ from
man. They are both like and unlike (Berger, p. 252).” This indicates that although
they share characteristics with humans, they also differ from them and it can be
argued that due to the innate characteristics of an animal its position in photographic
history is well suited for, and deserves evaluation and research in order to discover
how the animal subject in photography can be compared to the human subject that
usually is the focus of photographic theory.
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The characteristics attributed to the medium of photography, mainly its
supposed capacity for unmediated representation, made that soon after its inception
“…photography came to establish and delimit the terrain of the other…” (Sekula
(1990), p. 345). ʻothernessʼ or ʻthe other in photography have been researched
thoroughly. “The concept of the other…is used in feminist, psychoanalytic theory to
indicate that men construct women as ʻthe otherʼ; that is, as an opposite, in reaction
to which their own maleness can be defined (Wells, p.70).” The theoretical concept
of the other in photograph theory is used in order to explain how photography
functions as an agent in defining identity, mainly for the ones that employe it.
Usually there exists an opposition between photographer and photographed that is
unequal. The photographer, and the social class he represents, is thought to have
some sort of power over the photographed subject and through the photographic
medium he establishes and strengthens, or creates this power. “It has frequently
been argued that photography has been used as a way of consuming the world in a
manner that gives power over it; a way that allows us to discipline and naturalize
what might otherwise seem strange and frightening (Wells, p. 71).” The animal
subject could be regarded as just one example of otherness, next to woman,
indigenous peoples, children and the working class, for example. However the way
in how this otherness is defined varies from genre to genre. There is no such thing
as a singular ʻanimal otherʼ. In different uses of photography the animal appears in
different ways, for different reasons. Comparing these appearances with research
into human others may define various forms of the animal as other, with different
functions and uses accordingly. Just like photography itself is not explained through
one theory or is situated in one discourse, animal photography is neither. W.J.T.
Mitchell in “Looking at Animals Looking” in Picture Theory (1994) has noted this
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variation in animal otherness: “Animals stand for all forms of social otherness: race,
class, and gender are frequently figured in images of subhuman brutishness, bestial
appetite, and mechanical servility.” (Mitchell, p. 333). His work deals with images in
general, whereas my research will focus on the peculiarities of the animal other in
photography. Clive Scott underscores in The Spoken Image: Language and
Photography (1999) that “…although painting and photography share the same
genres, the parameters of each are rather different. What photography has done, by
and large, is to use its indexical dimension and its technology to increase generical
ranges, or the number of species within the genre (Scott, p. 40).” Scott subsequently
offers examples of this increasing of genres because of the use of photography,
concerning nudes and portraiture, but when the animal subject is concerned, the
genre of animal photography, arguably, is divided, or even can be considered as
non-existent, since many different sub-genres representing the animal subject can
be discerned in photography that al have their specific functions and uses,
dependent on where and how the animal subject was photographed.
In three chapters, three case studies researching specific appearances of the
animal subject in different genres will try to differentiate forms of the animal as other.
Through examining ʻa human otherʼ that can be found in these or related genres a
comparison will be made exposing the differences and similarities in how these
others are represented. The chapters will be built around the following research
question, adapted to the different genres treated in each: When accepting the notion
of the impossibility of ontology of animal photography, in what way then is the animal
subject as other represented in various photographic genres? How and to which
representation of the human other are these appearances of the animal as other
related regarding representation and function?
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In the first chapter a case study from early photography will focus on the
animal as other compared to human other as dead. How is the animal subject
represented in proto-instantanious photography in two photographs by John Dillwyn
Llewelyn, and how does this representation relate to the representation of the dead
human being in nineteenth century post-mortem photography? The second chapter
will deal with a case study from wildlife photography. The animal as ʻwildʼ other in
wildlife photography will be compared to the human other as cultural other. We will
examine how the animal subject is represented in George Shirazʼs publication
“Hunting With the Camera” in the July 1906 issue of National Geographic Magazine.
Subsequently I will examine how this representation relates to the representation of
indigenous peoples in colonial photography and the function of these photographs.
The third chapter will feature a case study from documentary photography that
shows the animal as objectified other while it is being observed by humans and will
be compared to the human other as object of voyeurism, depicted as such in
photography. The photograph that will be discussed stems from Gary Winograndʼs
book The Animals (1962) and is not a photo that exclusively shows an animal
subject, but combines it with a human subject that observes it. How does this
representation relate to the representation of the secretly observed human subject:
the human other as object of voyeurism in photography? Could the function of these
photographs be compared?
These three case studies, that are seemingly rather arbitrary in their selection,
do contain a progressional development. The first chapter deals with the dead
animal subject, compared to the dead human subject, which are more similar to each
other than to the live human subject because of their dead state. In a way they
constitute an ultimate obvious other; the dead animal other and the dead human
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other are both, so to speak, outside the realm of the living. Although focussed on
occurrences of these others in nineteenth century photography, the dead state is an
eternal one that exists outside of time itself, further constituting its otherness. In the
second chapter the wild animal, and the human cultural other are examined,
although alive, these two examples of otherness are still situated outside of western
society, and are very clearly bound to their temporal position, and are only
recognisable in contemporary society as pastiches of their first appearances. Since
western society provides us with a lot of theoretical reflections on photography and
otherness, the animal and human other in this chapter can still be analyzed from a
theoretical distance. In the last chapter we will examine the animal and human other
within the western world itself. The example of the Zoo animal and the exotic dancer
in this chapter are inhabitants of the world we ourselves exist in, not only physically
but also temporarily. The photographs that are discussed might be taken in the
nineteen-sixties and nineteen-seventies, the situations they depict and the way the
subjects are photographed are not exclusive for those eraʼs. The others examined in
this chapter are existent in the same society we are currently in. Through this
analyses that gradually positions ʻthe animal otherʼ from ʻobvious historical otherʼ, to
ʻan example of ʻotherness that is existent alongside usʼ, I try to provide some new
insights into the animal subject in photography.
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Chapter 1:
A Case Study From Early Photography:
The Animal as Other Compared To Human Other as Dead
The year 1839 is what the world generally sees at the inception date for the
medium we now know as photography. The western world rather hastily concluded
that it was now possible to make “unmediated” representations, attributing the new
medium a pivotal importance in the delivering research material and proof, for art,
science and political and social purposes, because of its apparent possibility to
translate the natural world into representations without being influenced by the hand
of an artist. And although this view of photography as conveyer of absolute truth has
been rejected long since, even from a 1839 perspective is was not a maintainable
idea. Almost four more decades were needed for photography to actually fulfill the
need for this supposed direct “unmediated” representation. The photographic
medium only in the late 1870ʼs became capable of producing an image in a split
second, registering the thing before the lens as it appeared in that instance. Until that
time especially the animal subject proved to be a complex subject for the juvenile
medium due to characteristics that differs it from, as well humans and non living
objects. This does not mean however that the animal subject was not present during
photographyʼs infant years. The following will try to elaborate on how the animal
subject differs from other subjects represented in proto-instantanious photography
and how this relates to the photographic medium as a representational medium.
Mathew Browerʼs “A Red Herring” in Developing animals (2011) provides insight
onto how and for which uses animals were depicted in photography. It will be made
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clear that the animal subject represented in proto-instantanious photography in many
occasions was actually dead. Two photographs by George E. Llewellyn will be
examined that supposedly depict animals within their natural environment, but
actually they depict taxidermically prepared animals. The taxidermically prepared
animal as three-dimensional representation of an animal, is compared to three-
dimensional representations of humans, and the peculiarities that arise when they
are photographed. Film Historian Andre Bazinʼs views on photography as
representational medium, and its forerunners, The ontology of Photograph (1960)
are used to discuss this. The connection between death, representation and
photography is used to compare Llewelynʼs photography with a genre of
photography that was common in the same era: the post-mortem photograph. Within
nineteenth century post-mortem photography, three main variations can be
discerned. Photographyʼs innate relationship to death has been described by,
amongst others, Susan Sontag. Photography seems to be inextricably linked to
death because of the representational capabilities of the medium and their influence
on the supposed livelihood of the subject depicted. Can the dead animal subject in
proto-instantaneous photography be compared with the dead human subject, which
implications for them being photographed are similar and were do these differ? How
are the singular characteristics regarding representation in photography of influence
in how the dead animal subject and the dead human subject are depicted?
1.1. Putting Drama In Diorama: The Animal Subject In Early Photography
The “…neat slice of time, not a flow.” that Susan Sontag speaks of in On
Photography, was not a slice, but rather quite a large chunk of time in early
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photography (Sontag, p. 17). The instantaneity that a modern audience associates
with the medium only became possible in the late seventies of the nineteenth
century. From a scientific perspective this development was an inevitable one no
doubt, since technical developments in photography from its inception on, were,
amongst other goals, aimed reducing the necessary exposure time to produce a
photograph. The animal subject can give us some insight in the consequences for
photographyʼs representational abilities being non-instantanious. The ultimate
photograph may not show the average viewer if it needed an exposure-time of 10
minutes or a split second. A photograph is a static image that, when is does not
contain blurriness caused by movement of the subject during the exposure time,
does not contain any indications of the exposure time that was needed for its
production. However how photography in general as a conveyer of information is
perceived is influenced by the technical possibilities the medium as a whole has at
that moment. The complete canon of photographs produced in a certain period, and
the state of the photographic medium they are produced, co-determine how a single
photograph is analyzed and understood. This means that a single photograph from
the proto-instantanious era may not contain any formal indications that it needed an
exposure time exceeding an instance, the knowledge that it came from that period
defines how we analyze what it depicts.
Due to the long exposure times needed in early photographic techniques, it
was absolutely imperative that the object that was to be photographed maintained
motionless for the duration of the exposure. This naturally did not prove to be a
problem with lifeless objects, as a well as with most flora, on the condition that these
subjects did not move due to external causes and that there was enough light
available in the first place. Human beings, alive and being able of movement, could
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be instructed not to move and were aided in this by a variety of props in the photo-
studio. These supporting props ranged from conveniently placed seats, pillars and
other people, to aids especially designed for this purpose like neck-supports
(Brower, p. 26).
The animal subject is neither lifeless nor motionless but lacks the ability to be
communicated with in a manner that is comparable to the way humans do and
consequently cannot be instructed the same way a human can be instructed. This
causes the animal subject to a particular problematic one to capture for early
photographers. Mathew Brower in Developing Animals (2011) has examined the
appearance of the animal subject in proto-instantanious photography. According to
Brower, the animal subject present in roughly the first 40 years of photographyʼs
existence was either domesticated, trained or forced to stand still, asleep or dead
(Brower, p. 6). In the image of a trained domestic small dog positioned onto two
chairs to enable it to maintain still for the duration needed for the exposure we can
see how inventive the ways to photograph live animals could be (fig. 3).
However, this hiatus in photographic ability cannot be found within the general
attitude towards the photographic medium and the belief in its ability to represent
nature at the time. Photography pioneer Henry Fox Talbot describes the then newly
introduced photographic medium, because of his belief in photographyʼs proof
function, as being capable of delivering understandings of the “true law of nature”
(Talbot as quoted in Van Gelder and Westgeest, p. 19). This belief in the scientific
objectiveness and the subsequent aptitude of photography for delivering (scientific)
evidence and representations of nature, is shared by many early champions, like
Dominique Francois Arago (Trachtenberg, p. 15), as well as critics, like Charles
Baudelaire, (Trachtenberg, p. 83) of photography. Paradoxically a large part of that
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very nature, the fauna, could not be registered due to long exposure times, during
most of their natural behaviour besides being dead or asleep. What are we looking at
then in some photographs by botanist, pioneer photographer and acquaintance of
Talbot, John Dillwyn Llewellyn (1810-1882), that are both estimated to be made in
the eighteen-fities (figs. 4 and 5)
1.1.1. Decoding Llewelyn’s Representations of Nature
The first photograph seems to picture a duck on a patch of land along a small
pond or creek (fig. 4). Besides from the overly white background, the scene appears
to be a normal natural one. The white background could have been caused by the
fact that the exposure time needed to make the foreground sufficiently visible in
photographs sometimes caused for the sky, which exudes more light, to turn out as
white areas on the ultimate photograph due to overexposure. Also the fact that the
colour blue was not picked up very well by early photographic techniques could have
been the cause of this. It is highly unlikely though that the duck would have
maintained standing there as long as the required exposure time would have been
for realizing this photograph. Unlikely, maybe, but not entirely impossible, since birds
can be seen standing still in the wild for longer periods of time sometimes, a walk in
the park will show you as much. Furthermore the fact that this photograph is from the
eighteen-fities is only apparent to us, because of the information provided from the
imageʼs source and because we might recognize some formal aspects of the
photograph as object - the oval frame, the size of the photograph - as being from that
period, which are due to the used calotype technique. This could be applied by a
photographer in any other time after the calotypeʼs invention, and in this way is not a
definite temporal indicator. The scene displayed however does not cary any temporal
“markers within the image restricting it to any historical period” and therefore ʻ“like
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any wildlife photograph, has a timeless quality that makes it appear contemporary”
according to Brower (Brower, p. 3). Brower here equals timelessness with
contemporary, but one could argue that when the time of a photographʼs production
cannot be determined, if it indeed automatically appears contemporary. The scene
depicted on the photograph however, due to the fact that no traces of human culture
are visible within the image, could be considered timeless since we see the image as
depiction of nature, which it is generally seen as (besides evolutionary changes over
millions of years) static.
The second photograph shows us an otter in a what seems to be an attentive
position, as if caught amidst his stroll along the riverbank (fig. 5). The idea that the
otter maintained still long enough in this particular position is downright
unimaginable, opposed to ducks, an otter is a very shy and highly motive animal.
The white spots in the background in this photograph are furthermore so large in size
that that the overexposure theory cannot account for them and it is no longer
realistically conceivable that this photograph is taken outside. In fact, this
photograph, as well as the duck photograph were indeed taken inside the studio.
The otter as well as the duck are actually both dead, prepared in a lifelike pose by a
taxidermist. (Brower, p. 8)
The use of stuffed animals in order to create photographs showing nature-like
scenes was common practice in early photography (Lanyon, p. 168). When
observing the duck and the otter in both photographs again with this knowledge, the
animals indeed seem to have a certain awkwardness in their poses. The duckʼs only
visible foot, for example, is standing too far behind to evenly support his bodyweight.
The otterʼs left front foot seems to be placed on a stone that is positioned there for
that reason alone. The nature the otter stands in seems to have been adapted to the
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rigid body of the stuffed specimen. These are just a few of the unwieldy details a
contemporary viewer can discover when examining the duck and the otter. However,
the Victorian audience that probably first saw these photographs would not have
been able to look at the photographs in the same way we can (Brower, p6). As
mentioned before, it was impossible to realize a photograph of an animal in action,
so nobody at the time would have known how a single isolated moment within the
movement of an animal would have looked like. Furthermore, the use of dead
animals, stuffed or not, as model for the depiction of animals in art was general
practice, also before the introduction of photography. Consequently it did not strike a
nineteenth century audience as odd that a dead animal was used to substitute for a
live one in order to create a truthful image of nature (Brower, p. 7).
The words ʻcreateʼ and ʻtruthfulʼ are important here, since together they
highlight the, now notorious paradox within photography. As mentioned before
photography at the time of its introduction was heralded as a producer of images that
could function as proof, being constructed by nature alone without the subjective
intervention of a human. But, particularly in the first 40 years that photography
existed, every photographic image had to be pre-meditated and its contents
preselected and staged. The photographs of stuffed animals did not work as
unrealistic or false to the general public at that time not only because photography
was introduced, and consequently seen, as a truthful way of representing nature.
More importantly maybe, the images created with this new ʻobjectiveʼ technique,
content-wise and formally, were precisely what was expected . The ideas and visions
concerning nature already present in art, science and literature were used in order to
create the photographic representations of nature and the animals in it. The first
photographs were not naturally given, but were heavily influenced by how images
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were made and constructed before the invention of photography (Van Gelder and
Westgeest, p. 21). The assumed truthfulness and believability of photography was
not based on what was represented but on how this representation was achieved
(Bazin, p. 6). Joel Snyder and Neil Walsh Allen explain in their essay: Photography,
vision and representation (1975) that “…The photographic image is a crafted object
rather than a natural thing…it is crafted in accordance with…ʼnaturalʼ laws…”, they
further argue that although it is quit logical and expected that “something” in front of
the lens can be seen on the eventual photograph, the way how this exactly happens
is “is neither natural nor necessary (Sneyder and Allen, p. 151).”
1.1.2. Interpetation and Temporality
The paradox of the intensely premeditated, staged and created photographic
image that was accepted as objective representation was existent in all early
photography. The specific problems concerning representation, communication,
exposure time and movement might not be confined to, but are very apparent with
the animal subject and in this way can clarify this paradox to contemporary viewers
accustomed to a photographic medium that is in no way comparable with its
nineteenth century predecessor. The fact that for a contemporary public Dillwyn
Llewellynʼs photographs almost instantaneously come across as as awkward is due
to the fact of our knowledge of how a living photographed animal looks like. It seems
inconceivable to a modern day public that people at the time were not capable to
appreciate these photographs as we do. Although the aforementioned is applicable
for all photography from the proto-instantanious era, photographs showing animals
were arguable even more difficult to decipher as staged realities. Recognizing death
in the same species (humans) seems to be an easier task when compared to death
animals. In what follows the different ways of portraying death in the proto-
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instantanious era and how the animal subject relates to the human one in these, is
elaborated upon.
1.2. Differentiating Photographic Death
The two photographs by John Dillwyn Llewellyn earlier discussed, appear to
show scenes of living animals in their natural habitat at first sight. Yet, we have
established that the animals portrayed are in fact dead and the surroundings are
most probably constructed inside a studio. The practice of positioning dead bodies in
a staged situation in order to evoke a situation were death seems no longer apparent
is reminiscent of one form of photographic practice that was common during proto-
instantaneous photography: post-mortem photography (Wells, pp. 243 − 244).
Although somewhat different in intention and use, the readability of stuffed animal
photography and post-mortem photography as well as their position and role in
photography history bear some resemblances.
1.2.1. Appearences of Post-Mortem Photography
When looking at post-mortem photography from the mid nineteenth century
three separate forms can be identified: First, there exist photographs that show the
dead people as indeed, dead. Showing the deceased in a setting that is permeated
with objects and props that are undeniably linked with death in western human
culture, like a coffin, intricate (white) flower pieces and religious symbols like for
example crucifixes (fig. 6). This form seems to be the most acknowledging of the
dead state and can be seen as the use of photography for registering a state or
occurrence in order to commemorate and preserve the moment, That Liz Wells in
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Photography: a critical introduction (2000) describes as: “…the significance of corpse
photography was to preserve likeness… (Wells, p. 244).” But note, the moment
which is acknowledged, is the one in which death already is inescapable and firmly
grounded or even accepted in the premeditation that preceded the creation of the
photograph. Although one could argue that with its deliberate placement of a corpse
amongst symbolic objects this form is reminiscent of still life painting featuring dead
animals, like hunting trophies, this specific appearance of the dead human body in
photography will not be further elaborated upon here. This form of post-mortem
photography was made well into the twentieth century in the western world and still
is used today in some countries as a way to immortalize lost loved ones (Wells, p.
244).
The second identifiable form can be found in photographs in which the
deceased seems asleep; stressing the similarities between the state of sleep and the
state of death. In the staging of this sort of post-mortem there is nothing, besides the
sleep-like position, and often the positioning of the corps in a bed and the clothing
that indicates that the subject is alive, however, more importantly, nothing also
indicates that the subject is actually dead. Dead is not acknowledged as having
occurred. In the photograph of an apparently sleeping girl (fig. 7), no cultural
indicators suggesting death can be seen, however the clothes the girl is wearing are
not every day apparel, but it is as a sleeping gown, that does indicate in a way, that
she is no longer in the day-to-day reality. She is positioned in a way nevertheless
that suggests she has fallen asleep like this.
This type of post-mortem photography accentuates a very peculiar, and much
described, by for example Siegfried Kracauer, Susan Sontag, Georgio Agamben,
and Roland Barthes, characteristic of photography (Thomas, p. 421); its ʻpowerʼ to
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make dead beings appear alive, or rather the fact that death cannot be differentiated
from sleep in photography, since the factor of time is eliminated. Roland Barthes in
Camera Lucida explains this by comparing photography to cinema:
“…in the photograph, something has posed in front of the tiny hole and has
remained there forever…; but in cinema, something has passed in from of this same
tiny hole: the pose is swept away and denied by the continuous series of images…In
photography, the presence of a thing…is never metaphoric; and in the case of
animated beings, their life as well, except in the case of photographing corpses, and
even so: if the photograph then becomes horrible, it is because it certifies, so to
speak, that the corpse is alive, as corpse: it is the living image of a dead thing. For
photographyʼs immobility is somehow the result of a perverse confusion between two
concepts: the Real and the Live: by attesting that the object has been real, the
photograph surreptitiously induces belief that it is alive, because of that delusion
which makes us attribute to Reality and an absolutely superior, somehow eternal
value; but by shifting this reality to the past (ʻthis-has-beenʼ), the photograph suggest
that it is already dead (Barthes p 78).”2
Being a momentary registration of the dead corps, the inevitable decay that a
dead corps will undergo is not visible and therefore banished from the proposed
ʻeternityʼ of the photograph. This is even true for photography from the proto-
instantanious era, since the decay of a dead being is seldom as fast that it
outspeeds even the longest necessary exposure times. Comparable imagery
depicting animal subjects seems harder to find, presumably the death state of an
animal was simply accepted for its relation to the human is not as intense or
personal as in the instance of a human death. When dead animals were
photographed, they were often taxidermically prepared and positioned in a lifelike
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situation. This brings us to the final form of photography featuring a death human
subject, the form in which the dead body is placed in a situation that is constructed to
suggest that death never occurred.
Geoffrey Batchen in Burning With Desire : The Conception Of Photography
makes an interesting observation about proto-instantanious photography:
“…photography insisted that if one wanted to appear life-like, one first had to act if
dead (Batchen (1997), p. 208).” This means that if one was actually dead, one could
also look lifelike when photographed. However awkward Llewellynʼs images might
seem to us, the fact that an animal body is positioned in a way that seems lifelike
may not strike us as lugubrious as when the same practice is administered upon a
human body, this is however, exactly what can be seen in some post-mortem
images from the third discernible category. In an attempt to accentuate the corpseʼs
lifelikeness, the deceased might even be posed next to a living subject, like with the
brother “standing” next to his sister, who is, quite conveniently also functioning as a
support for his immobile body (fig. 8). Another way of making the corpse seem “alive”
was by painting “eyes” on the closed eyelids. In the picture of a dead women where
this practice is applied (fig. 9), the lifelikeness of the positioned ensemble is further
enhanced by letting the dead woman hold a book, suggesting that she only just
closed it before staring into the camera. From what we can see, the body in this
photograph is probably laying on a bed of some sort, but since the photograph is
taken from such a standpoint that the woman is shown, staring us in the eye, she
appears lifelike, no matter in what way we look at the photograph. Opposed to this,
the photograph from the first category, that depicts the dead corpse as actually dead,
was composed in such a way, that its subject is always clearly dead (fig. 6). We
cannot approach the photograph in another way to obtain the same face-to-face view
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we have with the women. The framing by and the standpoint of the photographer
fixate the corpse in a way that also adds to the lifelikeness of the woman in fig. 9 and
to the accentuation of the dead state in fig. 6.
1.2.2. Three-dimensional Representation and Photography
However eery these images may seem, they are in accordance with the drive
that fueled the invention of photography and therefore the practice is not as
surprising as it seems to be, when assuming that photography is a form of
representation that stems from a long history in image and sculpture making as
Andre Bazin proposes in The Ontology of the Photographic Image (1960). As
discussed earlier, Andre Bazin, described humankind's need for representation of
the body as a way to preserve the dead body in order to make its memory last, first
mainly driven by religious believes, later as an answer to a more general desire to
commemorate. He describes the Egyptian practice of mummification as follows: “The
religion of ancient Egypt, aimed against death, saw survival as depending on the
continued existence of the corporeal body. Thus, by providing a defense against the
passage of time it satisfied a basic psychological need in man, for death is but the
victory of time...It was natural, therefore, to keep up appearances in the face of the
reality of death by preserving flesh and bone. The first Egyptian statue, then, was a
mummy…(Bazin, p. 4).” No need to say there exists a difference between statues
and photographs, however their function in achieving a durable believable
representation, or even substitute, of a body is comparable. Van Gelder and
Westgeest in discussing Hiroshi Sugimotoʼs work: The Music Lesson (1999) state:
“Sugimotoʼs image [The music Lesson] addresses the deeply rooted psychological
human need for making images that preserve human beings from eternal oblivion. It
is common knowledge that in order to satisfy that need, wax figures were
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photographyʼs most important three-dimensional forerunners (Strecks 2006) The
wax figures possesses the particular characteristics of an almost superhuman
realism, having an impact on the viewer that the figure is almost felt to be alive
(again) ( Van Gelder and Westgeest, p. 22).” Van Gelder and Westgeest continue in
describing Sugimotoʼs work, noticing that the two-dimensional format of the
photograph further is of influence in how we perceive the scene, in which they also
note a parallel between nature dioramas.
In that aspect it is interesting for us to look at an another example from
Sugimotoʼs work: Hyaena - jackal - Vulture (1975) that seems to depict a very
believable scene that probably is set in the African Savannah (fig 10). The
photographs stem from a series of works named Dioramas, Sugimoto himself, when
referring to these works, notes the authenticity photography is able to attribute to an
artificial scene: “Upon first arriving in New York in 1974, I did the tourist thing.
Eventually I visited the Natural History Museum, where I made a curious discovery:
the stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake, yet by
taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they
looked very real. I'd found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake
the subject, once photographed, it's as good as real (Hiroshi Sugimoto on his
website).”3 This reality comes from both the ʻflatnessʼ and the absence of time in
photography - a diorama can be viewed upon for a longer time, be walked around in
front of, so that it can be made out as being a representation. In Llewellynʼs
photographs this aspect of photography is used in order for the public to perceive the
images as real nature scenes, using photographyʼs transparency to elevate the
artificial to the real. Sugimoto, however, partly by naming the series Dioramas and
herewith emphasizing the original artificial status of what is depicted, actually
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accentuates this aspect of photography, commenting on, and therewith making us
aware of photographyʼs ability for deception. Victor Burgin in “Photographic Practice
and Art Theory” in Thinking Photography (1982), actually attributes the verifying
nature of photography to an incompleteness in the way it reproduces something: “In
an ingenuous assumption the photograph is held to reproduce its object. However,
the relationship between a photographic image and its referent is one of reproduction
only to the extent that Christopher Wren's death-mask reproduces Christopher Wren.
The photograph abstracts from, and mediates, the actual. For example, a
photograph of three people grouped together may, in reality, have comprised a live
model, a two-dimensional 'cut-out' figure, and a wax dummy. In the actual presence
of such an assembly I would quickly know them for what they were. No such
certainty accompanies my cognition of the photographic group (Burgin, p. 61).” It
may sound contradictory that photographyʼs deficit in its reproducible capabilities
enables a more realistic photograph, but by eliminating, not by choice but as
inevitable side effect, certain aspects in the photographic process, like time,
movement, smell, sound and three-dimensional viewing, photography actually
renders objects that differ from each other when observed direct to similar objects
when they are viewed through a photograph.
The Notion that a wax figure was an important three-dimensional forerunner of
photography is an interesting one. Although we are quit accustomed to the idea of
animal taxidermy, doing the same thing to a human body does not seem to settle
quite as well with the general public, a feeling comparable to the awkwardness one
can feels when looking at post-mortem photographs featuring dead human bodies,
positioned as if they were still alive. However before the nineteenth century the
distinction between the preparation of a human body or an animal body was not that
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definite. Reminiscent of Bazinʼs view upon Egytian mummyʼs as statue a rather
notable idea of the social theorist and advocate of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham
(1748-1832) comes to mind. Bentham after his death requested his body would be
turned into, what he named, an ʻauto-iconʼ, arguing that these figures “figures made
out of the very bones of the deceased, would in time supersede the necessity for
sculpture (Llewellyn, p. 53).” Indeed Benthamʼs body was preserved in the way he
requested and is still on display today at University College London. The head on
this figure however is a replica made of wax, since the original preserved head
started to look ʻdistastefulʼ.
Apart from the exact reasoning that Bentham had for requesting that his body
would be preserved in this way, which is a study on its own, his prediction that it
would make sculpture obsolete could be regarded as previsionary in a certain
aspect. The idea that the preservation of the actual body would be the ultimate
representation that could substitute for the deceived corpus was eventually not
granted in the sense that the auto-icon became the generally accepted way to do so.
Bentham died in 1832, seven years prior to the official introduction of the
photographic medium. He did not live to see how photography was able to capture
and immortalize the dead corpse, effacing and preventing any visible traces of
decay. The photographic medium arguably even superseded Benthamʼs goal
because of the fact that its final form is a two-dimensional flat one. Opposed to the
auto-icon, and taxidermically prepared animals, the photograph does not provide the
possibility to view upon the subject from multiple angles or to experience its static
presence for a longer time, in which it inevitably reveals itself as being dead.
The preparation of the human body in the way that Bentham proposed did not
become a mainstream practice, however taxidermy of animal bodies however
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became very popular, even more so after the introduction of photography. Here the
difference between the human and animal subject is very striking. Whereas
photography rendered the preservation of the complete human body for purposes of
commemoration obsolete, the practice of preparing animal bodies did even increase
(Brower, p. 14). Post-mortem photography featuring the human body in all three
aforementioned categories became immensely popular in the nineteenth century.
The dead animal body however is mainly represented in the third category in which
the dead are being presented as alive. An explanation for this could be found in the
fact that the animal subject differed from objects and humans as priorly described,
exactly because of its similarities to both. Where the human body could be properly
photographed from the mediumʼs inception, establishing with the general public a
fairly accurate ideas on how the human body actually looked like, making a prepared
human body immediately apparent as an inferior replica instead of a truthful
representation, the live animal body could not be recorded as such. Early
taxidermically prepared animals therefore were not as clearly definable as
unrealistic, simply because a definite photographic registration of live specimens did
not yet exist. This, paradoxically explains for the rise in popularity of taxidermy, also
a young trade at the time of photographyʼs inception, which made as much use of the
developing medium as vice-versa. James R. Ryan states in “Hunting with the
camera”: Photography, Wildlife, and Colonialism in Africa (2000): “Early
photographers employed taxidermy in order to capture portraits of animals in a
seemingly live pose and outdoor setting…Just as photographers drew on the skill of
the taxidermist to overcome their cameraʼs technical shortcomings, taxidermists
drew in turn on the photographer to provide them with an appropriate model of
realism for their displays.” Ryan continues to explain the nineteenth century viewers
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consent with the resulting imagery as: “[The poorly stuffed animal in early
photography] would have been unproblematic to nineteenth-century viewers because
[the poorly stuffed animal] would have been the model used to validate the success
of the image.” (Ryan, pp. 206-207) A similar view is expressed by Kitty Hauser;
according to Brower she argues that “…[the] indexical appropriation of the world
links both [photography and taxidermy] conceptually and structures their social
reception as evidence (as quoted in Brower, p. 14).” In addition to this, the
development of taxidermy was in line with the general augmenting development and
believe in science in the nineteenth century. Darwin introduced his evolution theory
supported by prepared actual specimens and photographs he brought along from his
global travels. But far more than solely being important in proving scientific
hypotheses, taxidermy, and photography showing taxidermically prepared animals,
were an important forerunner of instantaneous photography in validating and
establishing colonialism, which will be elaborated upon in chapter 2 (Ryan, p. 214).
1.3. The Dead Animal and the Dead Human in Early Photography
The animal subject in photography for the first forty years of the mediumʼs
existence was a singular one. They were however sufficiently represented
throughout this period, and apart from the occasional pet or farm animal, they were
usually dead. They were not always photographed as being dead, but, taxidermically
prepared, as being alive and active in a natural environment, as can be seen in the
images of George Llewellyn. These images were seen in a way as truthful
representations of nature, however nature as it was possible to perceive for a viewer
in the mid nineteenth century. The photographs, as those by Llewwelyn, were based,
more than on actual occurrences in nature, on a ready set of images and ideas about
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the natural world already present in the collective minds of the public, preconceived
by images made with proto-photographic techniques.
As we have seen the dead body, human or animal, was often present as a
subject in early photography. With the human body, death was either acknowledged
completely by presenting the corpse as such, masked by presenting the body as
asleep or ignored by presenting the body in an “active” lifelike position. With the
animal body, the latter form of presentation was most common. With the difference
that when the human body was photographed as such, the photograph was taken
shortly after death had occurred, or at least before the inevitable decay of the body
has begun. With the animal body, this moment was preserved before the photograph
was taken by taxidermically preparing it. Here a remarkable difference between the
animal and the human body in photography becomes apparent. Photography made
the preservation of the human body, as it was suggested by Bentham, for
commemorating it and preserving its likeness, obsolete. The process of preserving
the body for these goals that, as Bazin suggested, started with the ancient Egyptians
and their practice of mummification, in a way found its ultimate form in photography.
With the animal body however, as Brower explains by quoting Hauser and Ryan,
photography did not render the preservation of their dead bodies obsolete, but
actually was an accelerator for the at that time burgeoning craft of Taxidermy.
Taxidermy of animals, opposed to preparing human bodies, became hugely
important in scientific research in the colonies. Ironically the habit of photographic
dead corpses, animal or human, expresses an utter powerlessness masked by the
fact that there exists total control over how the dead subject is portrayed.
Photography here is used to arrest a state over which we have no longer any
influence. The inevitable decay of the corps is excluded and ignored, and what stays
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in the photograph is a momentary view upon something imaginary that already no
longer was at the time of the photographʼs creation; that of the subject being alive.
The photographic reality is reminiscent of the reality the subject may have been in,
but it is not an actual representation of that reality. However, the new reality is
accepted as the true one, or at least as a presentative of that.
When photography did became instantaneous it was exactly this convincing
power that made it utterly suitable for conveying information in a way that is desired
by its maker. This ʻpowerʼ so to speak, made photography an excellent tool for the
Western world in maintaining and reinforcing their colonial power. Photographs of
places and humans from exotic locations were made and distributed in nineteenth
century Europe to demonstrate the vastness and diversity of and control over the
empire.
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Chapter 2:
A Case Study From Wildlife Photography:
The Animal As Other Compared To the Human Other As Cultural Other.
When thinking about animal photography, wildlife photography is maybe the
first thing that comes to mind for many. Photographs of lions, bears, and other
ferocious beasts amidst predatory action, exotic birds, dressed in the most
outrageous feather gowns enacting positively bizarre courting rituals, close-up shot
of cubs, chicks, calfs and various other fluffy adorable infant animals protected, fed
and caressed by a protective mother animal, are part of a collective visual memory
whereas the (wild) animal is concerned. These images are undeniably popular up
until today, not only as photographs but arguably even more so in their moving
counterpart, the wildlife movie, or documentary. (Brower, p. 27, Grady & Mechling, p.
93)
In the previous chapter, however, it became clear that the wild animal subject
is hard to find in photography during the first 40 years of its existence (Brower, p.
26). Photographs of live animals that were not domesticated, trained or asleep in this
period are extremely rare. From about 1880 onwards, however, photography
became instantaneous, and therefore capable of producing what we now know as
the snapshot, which made it possible to capture moving objects, humans, and also
animals amidst their activities while being alive (Brower, p. xvii). This means that the
wildlife photograph, that has arguably become synonymous with animal photography
for the general public, could not be created before instantaneous photography.
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In what form, for what reasons and to which uses did the wild animals started
to appear in photography? To what form of photography portraying human subjects
is this depiction of the wild animal comparable, what are the differences and
similarities that arise when analyzed how they are both represented through
photography? These are very general and open questions and given the bulk of
wildlife images readily available created throughout instantaneous photographic
history probably impossible to answer as they are stated here. Although the
probability of singular ʻfirstʼ wildlife photograph is practically nil, given the fact that
photography already thoroughly permeated western society when it became
instantaneous, making the possibility that comparable photography simultaneously
appeared at multiple instances very probable, the idea of a one, first wildlife
photograph, could offer a possibility for a starting point in rethinking, adjusting, and
possibly partially answering the questions above.
When entering the words “first wildlife photograph” in internet search engine
Google, the first search result links to the website of National Geographic.4 Among
the image search results for the same keywords a certain photograph appears
several times; a black and white shot of three deer hanging in mid air that appear to
be fleeing the frame in different directions.
Upon following the link to the National Geographic website, we find that the
aforementioned photograph can be found there and is presented as a “milestone in
wildlife photography”.5 The reason for this photograph being a milestone appears to
be that it is part of the “First Wildlife Photos in National Geographic”. The photograph
is accompanied by the following text: “The July 1906 issue of National Geographic
featured its first ever wildlife photographs. Editor Gil Grosvenor printed 74 photos
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snapped by U.S. Representative and early conservationist George Shiras, beginning
a long tradition of featuring wildlife photos in the magazine.”
The first section of this chapter analyzes this photograph, making use of
information retrieved from the direct contemporary context it is presented in by
National Geographic on its website and the original context in the 1906 publication of
National Geographic Magazine. Between these two environments there lies a period
of over century, which after comparison and close reading of the two contexts, lays
bare some interesting shifts in the ideas about the practice that we have come to
know as wildlife photography. This information will be used in the attempt to answer
the first part of the question proposed earlier in this introduction; In what form, for
what reasons and to which uses did the wild animals started to appear in
photography? As it will become clear, the vocabulary used in photography in
general up until today, shows many similarities with the vocabulary used in hunting;
an activity that in most cases involves animals and was thoroughly interlinked with
the early practice of photographing wild animals. Words like shoot and snapshot
seem direct descendants from the hunting vocabulary, but arguably are more in use
today when photography is concerned. An attempt will be made in researching to
what extend this linguistic connection between hunting and photography exists,
whether is it merely based on similarities in superficial action, or if the connection
goes deeper, and if there exists a causality in this connection. This part will make
use of texts by Matthew Brower and James R. Ryan in unraveling the origins of the
wildlife genre and will be completed with notes on the linguistic connection between
hunting and photography by Susan Sontag and Christian Metz.
In the second part of the chapter an attempt is made to answer establish to
what form of photography portraying human subjects the depiction of the wild animal
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is comparable and what are the differences and similarities that arise when analyzed
how they are both represented through photography? Wildlife photography will be
compared with colonial photography, which shares characteristics in why, how and
where it was produced and published and in the effect it had on the public. These
similarities can be found in the affirmation of acts, that are in the present day and
age seen as unethical, being valorized by the photographic medium as necessary
and useful in the establishment of (national)identity. Both colonial and wildlife
photography are existent by virtue of the other, although since there appear to be
differences between the other as human or animal, it is analyzed how these
differences may have been influential in the aforementioned systems of affirmation,
valorization and transition. In examining these notions, literature on photography and
colonialism and the other will be drawn from texts by James R. Ryan, Liz Wells,
Anne Maxwell and Jennifer Tucker.
2.1. Hunting Photographers?
According to the text accompanying the photograph showing the three deers
on the National Geographic website, it was part of the first wildlife photographs in
National Geographic Magazine were published in the July publication in 1906. These
photographs were made by George Shiras 3rd (1859 – 1942), who is presented as
a politician and ”early conservationist”. This by no means makes them the first
wildlife photographs that ever existed, in his book Wildlife Films (2000), Derek Bousé
for example suggests that the first wildlife photograph, in his opinion, was a
photograph of penguins taken in 1872 (Bousé, p. 195), but the fact that they were
published in National Geographic is seen by the institution itself as a “Milestone in
wildlife photography”.6
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When reading the article itself, in which the photographs are published, it
becomes already clear in the introduction, presumably written by the magazineʼs
editor at the time: Gil Grosvenor, that several images from the article, were already
on display as early as 1900, at the Paris world exhibition, which automatically
indicates that they must have been created in, or before that year.7 An exact date of
when they were indeed created is not given, in the introduction nor in the text written
by Shiras himself that accompanies the photographs. A remark is made, though,
referring an earlier article by Shiras from 1892 in Forest and Stream from which he
duplicated fragments into the National Geographic article (Shiras, p. 373), indicating
that Shiras was already practicing wildlife photography to an extent that seemed
worthy to publish about in that year. The introduction furthermore states that Shiras:
“…for twenty years has devoted his vacations to this fascinating recreation ” (Shiras,
p. 367) which indicates that Shiras started his photographic endeavors around 1886,
remarkably closer to the introduction of instantaneous photography than the date of
the articleʼs publication in National Geographic. Nevertheless the introduction states
that it is “The first time he [Shiras] has permitted their [the photographs in the article]
publication” which means that the photographs supposedly were themselves not
printed in the Forest and Stream article, and outside of the display in the exhibitions
mentioned in the introduction were not accessible to the general public. But
according to Matthew Brower in “Camera Hunting in America” in Developing Animals
(2011), the article in Forest and Stream certainly did feature photographs by Shiras,
and he claims that this was the first time indeed that photographs by Shiras were
published, indicating that these photographs must have been earlier examples from
Shirasʼ work (Brower, P. 46).
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Up until now we have readily concurred with the assumption that this image
by Shiras is indeed a wildlife photograph, making it rather curious that in the whole
article Shiras does not use the term wildlife on its own or in combination with the
term photography. Instead, he describes his photographic practice as ʻhunting with
the cameraʼ (Shiras, p. 368), in fact, the whole article is an explanation on how he
uses hunting techniques in obtaining his images. The introduction goes so far as to
present Shiras as “…the originator of the sport of hunting wild game with the
camera”. The introduction furthermore states that the photographic “methods and
implements which he [Shiras] invented have been adopted throughout the world, and
have greatly simplified and popularized this branch of photography and sport.”
Although the term wildlife is not used, the introduction does mention that: “Mr Shiras
has made it a point never to photograph animals in parks or reservations, all of his
shooting being directed against game in the strictest sense wild.”8 This emphasis on
the animals depicted in the photographs being wild, however, was applied only
partially to accentuate the photographic capability that was needed to capture them,
but was of much more importance to underscore the competence of the
photographer as a hunter. “Much stress was also put on the quality and genuine
nature of the resulting photographs…insisting that they were authentic, first-hand
records revealing secrets which the eye of man had never before looked upon… the
first to show really wild animals in full freedom…that…photographs were ʻtrue to
natureʼ (Ryan, p. 215).” This fact was however always emphasized in combination
with the notion that the photographs were made by a skilled huntsman, that used
these skills to obtain the photographs. The animals being referred to as ʻwildʼ and
ʻtrue to natureʼ was not to underscore that how they are depicted is a representation
of that ʻwildnessʼ and natural behaviour, but to accentuate the difficulty in
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approaching and finding them, and therewith the extraordinary skill, that was
involved in photographing them.
Both Brower in Developing Animals (2011) and Jonathan Burt in The
Illumination Of The Animal Kingdom: The Role Of Light And Electricity In Animal
Representation (2007 [2001]) claim that the desire to photograph animals amidst
movement was an accelerator in the technical developments that enabled
photography to become instantaneous, they both reference to the world famous
photographs by Edwaerd Muybridge that depict horses frozen in various stages of
galloping, and the history of how these photographs were commissioned and came
to be (Brower, p. 21, Burt, p. 293). Whether in how far this is indeed the case
remains up for discussion and will not be proven or dismissed here. Important is that
the horses in Muybridgeʼs pictures were trained and domesticated. To photograph a
wild animal another hurdle needed to be overcome, namely finding one (Brower, p.
28). As anyone who ever walked in the woods in the hopes of encountering animals,
for either photographic, hunting or plain observational purposes, will confirm,
bringing your camera, gun or eyes alone will not grant you success. That
photography was technically capable of photographing wildlife did not mean that it
automatically did so, according to Brower wildlife photography was not “a category of
photography that was waiting to be discovered by the intersection of camera and
animal” but rather “…a historically produced cultural practice (Brower, p. xxi).” If any
photographic subject ever laid bare the fact that photography itself was not an
automatic, objective medium that was able to show reality as it is, it must be the wild
animal. The camera with all its technical capabilities, was in desperate need of a
human and its experience to be positioned in the right place at the right time. This is
where the hunter, and his set of skills, comes in.
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2.1.1. Hunting With The Camera
During the proto-instantanious photography era, the hunter and the
photographer were more separated in their roles in the creation of animal
photographs, as was made clear in chapter one; animals were often photographed
as taxidermically prepared specimens. To obtain these animals they needed to be
hunted first, in this way the hunter was of influence in animal photography before
“wildlife photography” existed. The obtainment of species did not only serve a role in
the creation of imagery depicting naturalistic picturesque scenes, the gathering of
living and dead animals and parts there from was an important part in mid-nineteenth
century Europe, in the quest for knowledge, fueled by science and colonialism.
(Tucker, p. 9, Ryan, pp. 205-206). A more detailed insight in this relation will follow in
the second part of this chapter. For now we focus on how the hunter and the
photographer became “one” so to speak.
“From the late 1850ʼs, explorers, soldiers, administrators and professional
hunters began to employ the camera to record images of animals, skins and horns
for purposes of scientific documentation and as evidence of their hunting
achievements (Ryan, p. 208).” Ryan here names various professionals that began
to ʻemployʼ the camera, which could give one the idea that he refers to different
groups of peoples, this probably was the case sometimes, but against the present
idea of profession and specialization, one must consider that in the nineteenth
century the boundaries between an ʻexplorerʼ, a ʻsoldierʼ, an ʻadministratorʼ and a
ʻprofessional hunterʼ were not as clearly defined as one may think. Geoffrey Batchen,
in Burning with Desire (1997) attempts to define the concept of nature, and its role in
the medium of photography. He indicates that in order to understand how
photography was able to develop simultaneously in what we now consider as
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different fields of study; “science, art, and literature” we must understand that from a
nineteenth century point-of-view they were “indivisible and often embodied in the
same person and one text (Batchen, p. 57).” The professions proposed by Ryan
therefore must not necessarily have been carried out by different men. In this way it
becomes comprehensible that Shiras, who is according to the article also a U.S.
representative, conservationist, and when investigating the man further, also turns
out to be schooled lawyer, as an avid hunter in his free time should engage in the
practice of photography with a zeal that in the present day seems reserved for the
professional photographer (Brower, p. 48). But this does not make him the first to do
so. “In treating his photography as a form of hunting, Shiras followed the lead of the
editor of Forest and Stream, George Bird Grinnel (1849 − 1938)….. Grinnel
developed the concept of camera hunting in a pair of editorials published in 1892. It
was in May 1892 that Grinnel first introduced the term Camera hunting.” (Brower, p.
50) What also should be reviewed here is that George Shiras, George Bird Grinnel
and the magazines Forest and Stream and National Geographic were all originating
from the USA. The commonly accepted inception of photography was in France in
1839. The medium in various technical variations was soon used and implemented
all over the continent, and with the aforementioned colonial expeditions that Ryan
discusses stemming from England and France it is only logical that “hunting with the
camera” should also have developed among users of the photographic medium east
of the pacific. Ryan in Hunting with the Camera:ʼ Photography, Wildlife and
Colonialism in Africa indeed states as such, though opposed to the American
camera hunters, they developed their practice mainly in the colonies, especially the
African ones. The development of the practice, though, took place in roughly the
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same period as is did in the USA, starting not long after the photographic medium
allowed for it (Ryan, p. 219).
In the earlier quote by Ryan, it is stated that photography was used by various
professionals to register: “…images of animals [which were dead], skins and
horns…” Ryan here discusses photography from the proto-instantanious period,
when photography became instantaneous, these same professionals began started
to use photography to photograph animals in the wild. This development stemmed
from the desire to show wild animals in their habitat, initially not because of their
pictorial quality of for conservation purposes, but for the same reasons for which the
dead animals and parts of them were photographed: scientific documentation,
establishment of empire through showing it, and as evidence of hunting
achievement. To do so, they wielded techniques that were already developed and
applied in hunting9 in which they substituted the gun for a camera. The resulting
images were substitutes for the hunted animal and functioned accordingly: as
hunting trophies: “The image is an image of prey. In being photographed [the animal]
has been hunted. Shirasʼs image[s] belong to the discourse of camera hunting—the
image figures the animalʼs capture by the photographic hunter (Brower, p. 48).”
Therefore the practice of photographing wildlife was not named or referred to as a
photographic practice, but regarded as a manner of hunting, a subdivision of hunting,
and as recreational or sportive. “The camera hunters were amateur photographers
who took advantage of the new photographic possibilities without framing their work
in terms of art (Brower, p. 30).”
It now becomes easier to explain why Shiras did not use the term wildlife, or
wildlife photograph. The idea we now have of wildlife photography, did not exist. The
first images of animals in the wild, now regarded as wildlife photography, were not
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seen as such at the time of their production. The first wildlife photographers were not
photographers, they even competed with the at that time burgeoning profession of
the professional photographer, as Brower explains: “The development of new
photographic processes changed not only what could be and what therefore was
photographed, but also who photographed it, and how those photographs circulated
and functioned. The developments in photographic technology that enabled animal
photography undermined the earlier generation of entrepreneurial
photographers…(Brower, p. 29).” The people that engaged in ʻhunting with cameraʼ
originated from all sorts of professions, with the general divisor that they were active
as hunters. In a desire stemming from their activities as hunters they started to use
photography, not to create photographs but to create animal substitutes that would
function in the same way as hunting trophies did. The transparency of the
photographic medium that is so important in what we today refer to as wildlife
photography, was of no importance. In modern wildlife photography, the illusion that
we are directly looking at the animal depicted is important, we are meant to forget
that in order to photograph an eagle inside her nest, a rather complicated
photographic act had to be performed. “…any attempt to understand early wildlife
photography cannot be trough the category of wildlife photography with its retified
notion of deep nature and imposed separation of human and animal (Brower, p.
Xxviii).” When ʻhunting with the cameraʼ is concerned, who the photographer was,
where and how the photograph was made was very important in the functioning of
such photographs as hunting trophies. “The [modern] rhetoric of wildlife photography
naturalizes itself and implies that the wildlife photograph is the inevitable result of
taking a camera into the woods to photograph animals (Brower, p. Xviii).” The
practice of wildlife photograph, however, was not developed as such, and did
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therefore also not started to appear. The term was coined and attributed to
photographs like that of Shiras at a later point in time. This shift in how these
photographs are comprehended according to Brower is due to the change of
discourse and context in which they are situated: “The increased circulation of
animals photographs in scientific ands other contexts obscured the connection
between the photographer and the animal essential; to reading the image as a
trophy (Brower, p. 82).” This transition can be seen in the work of Shiras, that was
first published in a magazine directed at hunters: Forest and Stream and, after
passing by in public exhibitions, appeared in National Geographic, that in retrospect
treats the photographs as wildlife photography. The photographs by Shiras and other
practitioners of ʻcamera huntingʼ were meant in the first place to function as
substitutes for the hunted animal and the hunting trophies that were made out of
them, and the action of taking the photograph was, more often than not, followed by
the actual killing of the animal. “…The photographic hunting that emerged around the
turn of the century was far from exempt from cruelty or killing (Ryan, p. 219).” Which
is not what a contemporary audience expects from modern wildlife photography that
actually aid in the preservation of nature, since it “…stands as the figure of an ideal
relation to nature; it provides access to nature while leaving it untouched” and
“…show us animals we could not ʻnormallyʼ see, wildlife photographs erase their
taking, offering their viewers transparent access to nature (Brower, p. xiii)”.
2.1.2. Point, Aim and Shoot
Now we have established that the first wildlife photographs were not actually
taken as such, but were functional as representations for the skills of hunters and
should be regarded as hunting trophies rather then wildlife images that allow us to
regard nature up close without actually penetrating or influencing it, it might be
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interesting to briefly address the fact that a large part of the vocabulary used in
photography up until today is similar to the vocabulary used in hunting. This
similarity, that is linguistic as well as functional, is addressed by Susan Sontag in On
Photography: “…The camera/gun- loading and aiming a camera, shooting a
photograph…(Sontag, p. 14)” and Christian Metz in Photography and Fetish (1984):
“…The photographic act…has been frequently compared with shooting, and the
camera with a gun. (Metz, p. 141).” Sontag and Metz both however interpret this
linguistic connection between the practice of hunting and photographic in a
metaphorical sense. Sontag explains that it due to the predatory act that is inherent
to photography: “To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing the as they
never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns
people into objects that can symbolically possessed…Just as the camera is a
sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimation of murder – a soft
murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time (Sontag, p. 14).” Metz bases his
linguistic connection on the fact that with instantaneous photography a snapshot is
created, a moment is frozen, and concludes that a corpse, because it is without a
past or a future, is created through photography (Metz, p. 141).
These metaphorical interpretations of the linguistic link are understandable
and valuable, however do not explain the origins for the use of hunting vocabulary
within photography. Brower tries to address this, and suggest that: “Thinking trough
the implications of the practice of camera hunting allows us to reread the relation
between cameras and guns. I suggest that the analysis allows us to move beyond
the psychoanalytical understanding of this relation and instead read it as the trace of
a forgotten moment in photographic history (Brower, p. 81).” The forgotten moment
that Brower speaks of, is the moment in photographic history in which camera
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hunting was a common practice. That he classifies it as forgotten, is because the
photography that was created with it, due to the change of context in which it was
made available to the public, was gradually transferred into the realm of wildlife
photography. He continues by stating that “Remembering that the metaphor was
once taken literally can help us read animals photographs against the grain. While
technology may have made capturing animals on film easier, the animals captured
are no less real (Brower, p. 81).” The reason Brower does this can be found in the
fact that he has written his book Developing Animals with the animal and its agency
in mind, and with that the rights of the animal. He want to make his reader realize,
that the vocabulary is now used without even thinking about hunting, and the killing
of animals that came along with it. However, James r. Ryan, who seemingly has a
less activist agenda in how he describes the animal subject in “Hunting with the
Camera: Photography, Wildlife and Colonialism in Africa” also states: “A number of
writers on photography have noted, in present-day Western society, where taking
photographs consists of ʻloadingʼ , ʻaimingʼ and ʻshootingʼ the camera has become a
ʻsublimation of the gunʼ (Sontag, pp. 14 - 15). Yet few have noted how this process of
sublimation was well underway in the second half of the nineteenth century, mots
especially within the language and practices of Victorian and Edwardian big-game
hunting.” In this thesis no political stance on how the animal should be treated is
taken, however that Brower suggests to take the connection more literal is not
without use when the article by Shiras is considered. In explaining how he, Shiras,
uses hunting techniques in obtaining his photographs, Shiras uses hunting
vocabulary, in describing his photographic act in a very literal way. The reason that
he does this is very practical, and logical, he did not need to adapt the vocabulary
already used in hunting to photography, but could use it in its entirety, with the only
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exception that the word gun had to be exchanged for the word camera. Because, as
we have seen, he was not a photographer (yet) but a hunter with a camera instead
of a gun. In this way the revelation that wildlife photography started out as hunting
with the camera could help to explain how the hunting vocabulary rather seamlessly
and undisturbed was assimilated into that of photography.
Sontag, arguably, also makes a literal connection between photography and
hunting though: “ʻOne situation where people are switching from bullets to films is the
photographic safari that is replacing the gun safari in east Africa…Guns have
metamorphosed into cameraʼs in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because
nature has ceased to be what it always had been – what people needed protection
from. Now nature – tamed, endangered, mortal – needs to be protected from people.
When we are afraid we shoot, when we are nostalgic we shoot pictures (Sontag, p.
15).” Incidentally she herewith in a way points out the same transformation that
Shirasʼ photography made, from hunting trophies made in an undiscovered, unknown
and possible dangerous nature to photographs that as wildlife photography aid in the
preservation of that very same nature.
2.2. The Human Subject as Other in Colonial Photography
That precisely National Geographic should turn up in a search for the ʻfirstʼ
wildlife photograph is not wholly unexpected, the National Geographic Magazine,
published since 1888 by the National Geographic Society, has become world-
famous for its featured photography concerning (social) geography, archaeology and
natural science. As they state in their description of Shirasʼ photograph, its
publication started of “a long tradition of featuring wildlife photos in the magazine.”
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Photography critic Andy Grundberg, in his review “Decoding National Geographic” in
Crisis of the Real (1999) of the exhibition Odyssey: The Art Of Photography At
National Geographic that was held in 1988 in Washington D.C. to commemorate the
one hundred year anniversary of the National Geographic Society, even speaks of
the pictorial genre known as ʻNational Geographic photographyʼ. Grundberg notices
that National Geographic Magazineʼs photography “made the world shrink” before
his eyes and its influence on “Americanʼs perception of other places, peoples and
species” is enormous. He continues by arguing that National Geographic Magazineʼs
photography “Not only…reflected a quintessentially American view of the world
throughout our century [the twentieth in this case]” but even “created and refined a
persuasive and pervasive photography aesthetic” (Grundberg, 1999, p. 172-173).
Grundberg touches here upon some interesting aspects about photography,
he states that photography somehow is capable to influence ideas people have
about spaces, peoples, objects and animals; that photography can influence
perception and even can shape or define peoples ideas about their own identity. And
that the aesthetic, or formal aspects of a photograph, can be persuasive and
pervasive. These effects of photography as shaping (national) identity, defining
perception and having persuasive power, are reminiscent of how photography is
described to have been an agent in the establishment, shaping, definition and, most
importantly maybe, the gratification and maintaining of colonial power.
The photograph that will function as a starting point in comparing the animal
subject on Shirasʼ photography will be the one that is published alongside the
exhibition review by Grundberg (Fig. . A starting point, since we will not so much
analyze this specific photo itself, but rather the class of photographs it could be
considered to represent, as was done with Shirasʼ photograph.
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The reason that we are using this particular photograph is not only because
Grundberg thought it was exemplary for the kind of photography: “…for which
National Geographic was once slightly notorious: dark-skinned, bare-breasted
woman, in their customary dress, looking at the camera without any awareness of
their impending status as spectacles for adolescent western eyes (Grundberg, p.
172).” But also because this very same photograph can be found on National
Geographicʼs website in the same ʻmilestoneʼ category in which Shirasʼ photograph
was placed. Not as a milestone in Wildlife photography, but as the first photograph
that showed bare female breasts in the magazine.10 The photograph on the website
is accompanied by the following title and caption:
“Indigenous Cultures
A National Geographic milestone, this photograph of a Zulu bride and groom
in Witwatersrand, South Africa, became the magazineʼs first picture of a bare-
breasted woman when it was published in the November 1896 issue. The decision to
run it set a precedent to publish photos of indigenous peoples ʻas they areʼ.”
What is interesting is that Grundberg uses the word notorious, and continues
by explaining that the bare breasts that are to be seen in some photographs
published in National Geographic Magazine caused for his adolescent self to be
stirred in a way that is left open for us to speculate upon. National Geographic itself
also explains that the showing of bare breasts in the photograph is the reason that it
is considered a milestone. This is, indeed very probable, given the publication date in
the late ninetieth century, a period that was certainly less used, or acceptive, to the
open display of the female nude. What National Geographic however does not stress
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in the caption, although they use the title ʻIndigenous Culturesʼ is that the bare
breasts belong to a woman of colour, a fact that Grundberg does point out. This
brings us to the second reason why this photograph can be considered ʻnotoriousʼ,
because although National Geographic states that its publication “set a precedent to
publish photos of indigenous peoples ʻas they are.ʼ” this photograph is an example of
how photography was used in order to represent peoples from the colonies to the
western public. It would be interesting to research at what time National Geographic
published a photograph from bare breasts belonging to a woman stemming from the
western culture National Geographic was produced for and within. It was unable to
find this ʻmilestoneʼ on their website, although we might safely conclude that it
occurred a considerable time after the publication of this photograph. What this
rather blunt speculation is meant to reveal is that, although regarded as a milestone
in retrospect and probably even scandalous when it was indeed published, a
photograph displaying ʻwestern breastsʼ would certainly not have been published.
The fact that it is a person from an indigenous culture who these bare breasts belong
to, and not the fact that the photographs shows bare breasts, is the reason the
photograph was published in the first place.
2.2.1. Colonial Photography as Conveyer of Truth
This indicates that there existed a difference, or an inequality, in how people
from other cultures were represented through photography in National Geographic.
This difference can be explained by their functioning in colonialism. John Pultz in
The Body And The Lens: Photography 1839 to the present, “Colonialism, Race and
the “other” (1995) states that “The process of describing the body is never innocent.
One must always ask who is doing the describing, and why? In the case of the many
photographs made in the nineteenth century of the indigenous peoples of countries
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outside of Europe, the answer must very often be Europeans, exerting social control
over colonized peoples (Pultz, p. 20).” Photography from its inception on was used to
deliver visual information from the territories colonized by the countries in which that
inception had materialized and photography was used to the greatest extent during
the nineteenth century. Photography as an invention itself was even seen as, an
example of the superiority of such countries, Jennifer Tucker in Nature exposed:
photography as eyewitness in Victorian science (2005) in relation to Great Britain
states that “Many Victorians argued that science and photography demonstrated the
superiority of British civilization (Tucker p. 9).” That photography was able to function
in the establishment of colonialism is due to the fact that at the time the medium was
still largely regarded as a conveyer of truth. Liz Wells in “Surveyors and Surveyed ”
in Photography; A Critical Introduction (1988) states that “Photography grew up in
the days of Empire and became an important adjunct of imperialism, for it returned to
the western spectator images of native peoples which frequently confirmed
prevailing views of them as primitive, bizarre, barbaric or simply picturesque (Wells,
p. 68).”. Wells argues that the images that were brought back from the colonies did
not so much provided the public with new information about the indigenous peoples,
but rather functioned as a confirmation of the ideas the public already held about
these peoples. Susan Sontag explains that “Photographs cannot create moral
position, but they can reinforce one- and can help build a nascent one (Sontag, p.
17).” These nascent ideas about peoples in the colonies were largely based on
written and drawn material representing the peoples and live in the colonies. But
ʻ…unlike the body of painting and engravings of ʻexoticʼ peoples that had been
popular Victorian Subjects, photography claimed to be able to create objective,
ʻscientificʼ records which were free from the bias of human imagination (Wells, p. 69.)
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Despite claims for its accuracy and trustworthiness, however, photography did not so
much record the real as signify and construct it. In the portrayal of indigenous
peoples this resulted in photographs that were showing these peoples without any
indicators of modern civilization. According to Anne Maxwell in Colonial Photography
& Exhibitions: representations of the ʻNativeʼ and the making of European iIdentities
(1998) colonial photography “…represented ʻnativeʼ peoples as non-interiorized
ʻothersʼ who existed outside the common bonds of humanity and the flow of history
(Maxwell, p. 2).” The absence of modernity in this photography indicated that
modern civilization did not enter or was developed in the colonized territories, which
aided in the justification of the colonizersʼ presence in these territories. “By
representing colonized peoples as savage and primitive, the images reassured
Europeans of their unique claim to civilization (Maxwell, p. 7).” The absence of
modern civilization, furthermore, suggested that there was even a need for
colonizers to be there, since they stemmed from civilized modern society and could
transfer these, in their opinion, superior values to the colonies by their presence
there. What actually was done, was the transferral of a preconceived idea about
indigenous peoples onto these peoples, by photographing them accordingly. This
constructed identity that was attributed to the indigenous peoples of the colonies,
was as opposite to the identity of the people from the colonizing powers as posable,
and in being so, affirmative of that identity: “European culture was defined against
[the constructed] ʻotherʼ of colonized peoples (Wells, p. 70).” The indigenous
peoples were indeed not represented ʻas they areʼ, as indicated by National
Geographic, but were “… categorized and ranked according to ʻanthropologicalʼ type.
Those who were subjected to the colonizerʼs gaze were often seen as merely
representative of racial or social groups. And were usually posed so as to embody
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particular kinds of dress, social roles and material cultures (Wells, p. 69).” The ʻotherʼ
that indigenous peoples were used for to represent in colonial photography, was
arguably not only opposite to the identity that colonizers attributed to themselves;
Frantz Fanon in Black Skin/ White Masks even goes so far as to categorize the
indigenous people as they were represented in colonial photography in “the universe
of object, where they remain beyond the limits of cultural intelligibility.”, arguing that
“…in colonialist discourse ʻnativeʼ peoples are not positioned within the
psychoanalytic structures of self and other (as quoted in Maxwell, p. 2)”.
2.2.2. The Constructed Human Other and the Animal
Photography of indigenous peoples, just like photographs of wild animals,
aided in the construction of empire; the construction of the ʻotherʼ that indigenous
peoples and wild animals were meant to represent originated from the same system
of representation (Ryan, p. 213) However photographs portraying indigenous
peoples did so by representing and accentuating the differences from Western
peoples, differences that were pre-selected to show the subjects as being uncivilized
compared to Western standards, confirming the superiority of the colonizer. With the
wild animal subject, the creation of the photograph in such a way was not possible.
The wild animals subject couldnʼt be instructed to pose in the way desired by the
photographer, and also could not be made to show behaviour that is was expected
to show. Furthermore, caused by proto-instantanious photographyʼs impossibility to
capture wild animals, there was no comparable precedent in how the wild animal
should be presented, even if it could have been instructed. The superiority of the
colonizer through these photographs was emphasized by initially presenting them as
hunting trophies, that accentuated the skill and power of the ones that made them.
“The capturing of the animals was a symbolic representation of the conquest of all
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distant and exotic lands (Berger p. 259),” the word ʻcapturingʼ that Berger uses here,
again points out the linguistic relation, it can be understood as concerning animals
that were captured both through hunting and through photography. The wild exotic
animals in these photographs represented the richness in natural resources and the
undiscovered wildness of the colony, and therewith that of the colonizer. The wild
animals were being made into representatives of the wild nature that was tamed and
thus controlled by the colonizers, by capturing these animals photographically but
through the use of hunting techniques. To reinforce this functionality, photographs of
wild animals as hunting trophies were published alongside photography that showed
the hunters alongside actual hunting trophies “Such photographs of white men with
dead animals or antlers, tusks and skins are a common even cliched, feature of
victorian and edwardian colonial photography, and they testify further to the
significance of hunting as a ritualistic display of power by white colonial elites over
land, subject peoples and nature (Ryan, p. 208).” This accentuates again that
transparency, or the effacement of the production process, important in wildlife
photography, played no role in “hunting with the camera”.
What is similar in the representation of wild animals and indigenous peoples is
that they both are presented as being outside of modernity, and therefore could be
ruled over by, or assimilated into, the culture that did place itself within modern
civilization. Ryan in discussing colonial photography in Africa states: “African nature
[was seen] as primeval, untainted domain to be controlled by and for europeans.
[Colonial photography was] to have serious consequences in terms of the
environment and it animal occupants, as well as for…indigenous African
populations.” But whereas the human subject, as we have seen, was attributed with
this position by the way is were portrayed, the animal subject has a place outside of
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human civilization and modernity by its innate characteristics. Within the visual
rhetoric of the animal photograph there is no meaningful difference between a
contemporary animal and one from the nineteenth century. An animal does not carry
cultural temporal indicators that enables a human viewer to define it as stemming
from a certain era (Brower, p 4 −5). The fact that animals, since they are in fact
animals, by definition are not a part of human civilization also aids in the acceptance
of the representation of behavior, occurrences and body parts, that are not accepted
in a comparable way when the human subject is concerned. Photographs of animals
mating, fighting, nursing, dying, or photographs showing genitalia or infants animals
are not protested against, by the animals themselves, but maybe even more
importantly by the public that usually regards these representations as educational
and entertaining, and not as trespassing the privacy of the animal or as offensive to
their own morality (Bouse, p. 23-24). When looking back now at the photograph that
shows the bare breasts of an African woman, the same invasion of privacy can be
seen as the invasion of privacy that is regarded normal when an animal subject is
concerned. That the photograph, and many more photographs like this that were
published in the magazine, could be regarded as notorious, not only because the
photograph shows bare female breasts. It can be seen as notorious because, in a
time where the representation of bare Western breasts would have been outrageous
and unimaginable, the representation of the bare breasts of an indigenous woman,
was maybe frowned upon, but was published anyway. This was possible since by
effacing signs of modernity and modern civilization in the constructed representation
of indigenous peoples from the colonies as ʻotherʼ, the indigenous peoples were
ascribed characteristics that are inherent to the wild animal subject. Maybe they
were not completely reduced to objects as Frantz Fanon argues, but arguably, the
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ʻotherʼ they represent showed more similarities with the wild animal subject than the
western human subject, therefore they could be viewed upon and function in the
same way, as wild animals did, in colonial photography.
2.3. Wildlife Photography as Colonial Photography
What we now regard as wildlife photograph is marked by the transparency
that is inherent to the photographic medium, when regarding a wildlife photograph,
one beliefs that it offers a direct view into nature, the way it was made is effaced or
neglected in our observation of it. However, although early photographs from animals
in the wild contain formal characteristics that makes us classify them as wildlife
photography, this transparency was not definable in their first appearances and
functions. Photographs, like that of George Shiras originate from a practice that
actually cannot should not be regarded as wildlife photography, or photography for
that matter, because it was seen as a variation of hunting at the time they were
made. A variation of hunting in which the gun is substituted by a camera. This simple
substitution can partially explain how the vocabulary used in hunting permeated that
of photography. The skills that were needed for hunting were used in order to find
and isolate the animal so that it could be photographed, the resulting photographs
functioned accordingly, not as wildlife representations, but as hunting trophies,
accentuating the skill of the huntsman rather then the beauty of nature. This is where
the transparency is lost, the context of by whom, how and where the photograph was
made, was actually pivotal in the functioning of the photograph. The photographs, as
hunting trophies, were part of a larger representational network that aided in the
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definition and affirmation of colonial power. The photographs as hunting trophy did
this by accentuating the skill, and therewith the control of the huntsman who made it,
and the superiority of the culture he originates from over the land the animal was
shot in. The representational network of which these photographs were part also
included photographs of indigenous peoples. The veracity that was attributed to the
photographic medium was used by colonizers to confirm ideas about indigenous
peoples already in existence, that were previously planted in the minds of the
general western public by media that did not have this veracity. The “other” that was
created in photographing indigenous peoples according to these ideas, was a
generalized representation of a stereotype. They were not presented as having
singular identities, but as representatives of a class of people. In doing so, the
colonizers, used these constructed identities, that were freed from any indications of
modernity or civilization, attributed to the indigenous peoples as “others” in the
creation and affirmation of their own identity. Animals by nature were actual the ideal
ʻCultural otherʼ opposed to which the western world could define itself, with no
indicators that places them in modernity or comparable civilization of their own. In
order for indigenous people to function in the ideal same way, they were deprived,
through the photographic medium, from the characteristics, human civilization and a
place in history, that set the human apart from the animal.
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Chapter 3:
A Case Study From Documentary Photography:
The Animal as Other Compared to the Human Other as Object of Voyeurism
ʻI photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.ʼ
Garry Winogrand (1928-1984)
In the following chapter a photograph printed on page 27 by Garry Winogrand
(1928 − 1984) from his book: The Animals (1969) will be analyzed. In this
photograph the animal subject is present, however, opposed to the photographs
discussed in the case studies in chapter 1 and 2, in the presence of human beings.
The photograph does not have the animal as its main subject but is depicts two
human couples in the zoo while they are observing two elephants. The main focus in
the photograph seems to be on that observational act itself. The observation of the
animal other here is not exclusively done by the camera but by the human subject in
the photograph as well. In order to examine how and to which human other, this
specific animal other relates, the observatory act that the photograph depicts is
analyzed first, secondary the observatory act in the making of the photograph is
analyzed in attempt to discover what the doubling of that act might reveal about the
former and itself.
The doubling of the observational act in Winograndʼs photograph allows for us
to see it as a ʻpoint of inter-section of multiplicities of gazes (Wells, p. 325). If we
identify and dissect the different gazes that surround (secondary observation by
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Winogrand) and are present (the observational act depicted) in this photograph, we
can “allow viewers of the photo to negotiate a number of different identities both for
themselves and for those pictured; and it is one route by which the photograph
threatens to break frame and reveal its social context (Lutz and Collins, p. 354)”.
We will examine the intra-diegetic gaze as Burgin describes it, the exchange
of looks within the photograph, in this there are two intra-diegetic gazes between the
two pairs of human onlookers and the elephants in the photograph (Burgin, p. 148).
The photograph is situated in a zoo, a location that is constructed especially for the
purpose of observing animals. The visitors are physically severed from the areas
where the animals are displayed, which makes looking at the animals the main if not
only interaction, or rather action, possible for these visitors. This concentration on
one-sided looking and observing for pleasure, discouraging any other communication
like for example conversation of touching and reciprocal communication altogether is
reminiscent of voyeurism. To examine the functioning of the human and the animal
gazes in the zoo by the subjects in Winograndʼs photograph, “Why Look at animals”
(1980) by John Berger and “zoo Spectatorship” (2007) by Randy Malamud, will be
wielded as the main sources. How and if indeed the gazes surrounding this
photograph, can be regarded as voyeurism will be examined using the
aforementioned texts in combination with primarily “Looking at Photographs” (1982)
by Victor Burgin and “Representation, Voyeurism, And The Vacant Point Of View”
(1979) by literary criticist and philosopher Joel Rudinow.
The other gaze that will be examined is that of the photographer, which in this
case will be coupled to that of the reader, or onlooker of the photograph as these two
gazes are interlinked: “…the [photographic] system of representation has
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accustomed us to identifying our own point-of-view with the look of the camera, and
therefore a full-frontal mirror reflection with the self (Burgin, p. 150).” The doubling of
the observatory act in this photograph seems to emphasize Burginʼs notion that “The
signifying system of photography, like that of classical painting, at once depicts a
scene and the gaze of the spectator, an object and a viewing subject (Burgin, p.
146).” With this in mind we will make use of W.J.T Mitchellʼs ideas on the meta-
picture; a picture (a photograph in this case) about a picture, providing a second
order discourse that can tell us something about that picture (Mitchell, p. 35, p. 38).
In this case we will look into what the fact that the observational act is represented in
the photograph, opposed to the notion that we could be looking at that act itself in
reality, adds to our (the readerʼs) understanding of that act. The notion that
Winograndʼs photographic act doubles the observational act he depicted also
implicates that it doubles the voyeuristic aspect of it.
Finally we will be examining both the aforementioned gazes and the
connected notions on voyeurism, within and around a photograph in which a similar
situation is depicted. In this photograph the observatory act is also doubled by its
photographer Susan Meseilas, but the intra-diegetic gaze is between a human and
an objectified human other. We will use notions by film theorist Derek Bousé on the
specificity of the animal subject and the complications that this specificity adds to the
act of observing them, to display how these are of influence in the way we observe
the objectified animal, opposed to the human objectified other, both directly and
photographically.
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3.1. Looking at Animals in the Zoo
As stated in the introduction, the zoo is a place constructed to enable humans
to observe animals, arguably there are many more objectives that the modern zoo
has, which concern nature conservation and education, but the main reason for the
general public to visit the zoo is look at animals in order to be entertained (Berger, p.
259). Randy Malamud describes the observatory act in the zoo as follows:
“The spectatorʼs opportunity to watch everything animals do, resembles on
some levels the power and pleasure that characterizes the disorder of voyeurism.
people watching ever-present and compliant subjects – carteblanche – encompass
the zooʼs visitors role, their raison dʼetre (Malamud, p. 221).”
Malamud indicates that the act of looking at animals in the zoo is entertaining
since pleasure is obtained because the looking at animals there is inherently
voyeuristic. In Winograndʼs photograph there are two pairs of humans, in apparently
very different ways, looking at Elephants in the zoo. Can these ways of observing
indeed be classified as being voyeuristic and therefore explanatory for the facts that
visitors are entertained in the zoo and is that because of how these observations are
acted out or because of what they are aimed at and where?
3.1.1. Obvious Voyeurism in the Zoo
The couple on the left side of Winograndʼs image is covered by a cardboard
box, in this scenario we assume the box is equipped with viewing holes and is used
to hide under, in order to observe without being observed doing this. According to
Victor Burgin, by obscuring themselves the couple transforms their direct
observational act into a voyeuristic one, the ʻvis-a-visʼ confrontation is corrupted or
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opposed, identifying this gaze as voyeuristic (Burgin, p. 148). Although Burgin talks
about photography, this notion is applicable here, when the cardboard box is
interpreted as a metaphor of the camera, in the sense that it is a lifeless object that
clouds the direct gaze between two living beings by being in between, and in an
even more literal sense, because a camera is, in its most primitive form, not much
more than a box with a small hole. This metaphor will be discussed further upon in
chapter two. This clouding of the direct gaze however, is mostly hindering the view of
the elephants, it is not equally disrupting for both parties engaging in the reciprocal
gaze. According to Joel Rudinow this inequality is the actual signifier that it concerns
a voyeuristic act here, he states that whether a gaze can be considered voyeuristic
or not, is not dominantly dependent on “the visual nor the sexual, but asymmetry
(Rudinow, p. 176).” Rudinow continues, nevertheless, by saying that: “The voyeur
seeks a spectacle, the revelation of the object of his interest, that something or
someone should be open to his inspection and contemplation; but no reciprocal
revelation of openness is conceded, for the voyeur requires at the same time to
remain hidden (Rudinow, p. 176).” He seems to partially contradict himself here by
saying that the voyeur requires to be hidden. To be hidden is a state, that, when
taken literally, very much has to do with the visual. He even argues that: “The
importance of concealment is shown for example by the impoverishment in viewing
conditions which the voyeur will often willingly suffer in favor of it (Rudinow, p. 176).”
Although Rudinow claims that asymmetry is the main component that indicates that a gaze is
voyeuristic, this asymmetry is to be obtained by obscurement. Also Burgin argues that a disruption in
reciprocal visibility qualifies a gaze as voyeuristic. The gaze of the couple, concealed by the
cardboard box, may indeed be viewed as voyeuristic, seemingly confirming Malamudʼs statement.
The object of the gaze, the elephants, can no longer identify the source of the gaze as anything other
than a cardboard box, but the couple can still look more or less undisturbed at the elephants. In doing
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this, the couple grants the elephants the ability to recognize and react to a human gaze, like humans
can, but only to a certain extent, since the way they obscure themselves is very obvious, and would
fool no human into thinking that no one was watching them. Nevertheless, their gaze can be
considered voyeuristic in a way that is not exclusive for the location of the zoo or the fact that it is
aimed at animals. Rudinow and Burgin however, are both discussing the gaze between humans, and
base their notions of that gaze being voyeuristic on the fact that humans are equal in some way,
mainly in their visual and communicative abilities, and that the inequality needed for a gaze to be
voyeuristic, bringing with it the desired satisfaction, can be obtained by visual concealment of the
voyeur.
3.1.2. Unavoidable Voyeurism in the Zoo
The couple in the middle of Winograndʼs photograph is not covered by a box
however, they are presumably, their faces are not visible, directly looking at the
elephants, and the elephants are able to see them. Arguably this is the way most
people observe animals when in the zoo, but can this way of observation also be
considered voyeuristic, as Malamud argues? If we accept the notion that the
voyeuristic gaze is defined by an inequality, or asymmetry between the parties that
participate in the gaze, as Rudinow states, where is this inequality situated in the
zoo, when it is not to be found in the open and direct reciprocal gaze between the
majority of zoo Visitors and the animals they observe? Could it be that in the zoo the
inequality is provided by the location itself? The requirement to be hidden and the
impoverishment of view that Rudinow speaks of, can be found in the zoo, but in the
not literal sense of concealment, but in the manner in which the animals are
represented in the zoo. John Berger in “Why Look at Animals” made some
observations about the zooʼs characteristics in how it constructs the possibility for
viewing animals. “In a zoo, ʻ…animals are always the observed. The fact that they
can observe us has lost all significance. (Berger, p. 257).” Whereas the couple
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covered by the box does address some significance to the fact that the elephants
might see them, the couple that openly gazes at the elephants does not. They
however are figuratively concealed by the fact that they are in the zoo. Although the
zoo is designed in such a way that the animals seemingly are in a nature like
situation, and we can observe them as such, it is a manmade structure, consisting of
confined spaces. In these spaces, animals are sorted by species, surrounding by just
elements that are reminiscent of their natural habitat. The animals cannot leave
these spaces at their own free will, they cannot escape the gaze of the visitor,
making concealment by the visitor obsolete, since the desired effect is provided for
by the construction of the zoo. According to Berger: “The décor [in a zoo] serves two
distinct purposes: for the spectator they are like theatre props: for the animals they
constitute the bare minimum of an environment in which they can physically exist
(Berger, p. 260).” Berger here, by stating that the decoration functions for the
spectator as theatre props, insinuates that the animals to the visitors, can be nothing
more than actors in this theatre: by being positioned in an artificial environment they
themselves become artificial. Although they are ʻrealʼ animals, the fact that they are
in the zoo transforms them into representations of themselves. ʻEach cage is a frame
around the animal inside it. Visitors…proceed from cage to cage, not unlike …in an
art gallery [to] stop in front of a painting and then move on to the next. (Berger, p.
260)ʼ The animals are only a representation of an animal, framed by their cages,
involuntary edited into groups and the zoo itself is a retouched simulacrum of nature,
with visual fragments creating a pastiche of that very nature.
When seeing the animals in the zoo not as actual animals, but as
representations from animals, the act of observing them, even without concealment,
can be seen as voyeuristic, also according to Rudinow. Rudinow, namely, in his
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analysis of what makes an observatory act voyeuristic, states that “…The
consumption of representations generally is voyeuristic.” (Rudinow, p179). He
argues that this is a possibly because the distance that can be diminished to a
minimal, enabling an augmented intimacy, when viewing a representation. “The
concealment, invisibility, or anonymity required by the voyeur place him necessarily
and irreducibly at a distance from the object of interest. But the benefits of intimacy,
equally requisite to satisfaction, are at the same time understood to be attainable
only through the elimination of distance (Rudinow , p. 179).” Because of the this
paradoxical character of the voyeuristic act; the need to be concealed or invisible, yet
to be as close as possible at the same time, the voyeurʼs experience is characterized
also by a constant tension. The voyeur does not stand a chance of gaining
satisfaction. (Rudinow, p. 178). “What is therefore…most desirable [to obtain
voyeuristic pleasure] is the utmost decrease of distance without its disappearance
(Rudinow, p. 179).”
In this sense a representation partially is satisfactory for obtaining voyeuristic
pleasure, it can be approached much closer, enabling more sense of intimacy,
without being discovered. However the reciprocal capabilities of what we classically
would regard as a representation, are normally nil, and herewith the chance of being
discovered, partially responsible for the voyeuristic pleasure, is also rendered
impossible. This is where the zoo becomes special, The animals there, although
mere representations of their counterparts in the wild, are still capable of reacting in
some way, not only capable but even expected to: “In the zoo the humans demand
to be noted by the animals (Malamud, p. 225).” Unlike human actors in a theatre,
also a representation with live beings, they cannot be expected to comply with the
silent agreement that one ignores its audience, because of the fact that they are
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animals and cannot be instructed to do so. The way in which they do, cannot be
considered as natural behaviour, but that is not important, it is about the excitement
within the audience when they do react. “zooʼs are more about people than about
animals; it is in some ways as if the spectator is looking at himself seeking the
spectacular beauty of life, he ultimately discovers an incarnation for his own
reflection to be the most stunning of all (Malamud, p. 228).”
Malamudʼs notion that the pleasure of watching animals in the zoo is obtained
because of its inherent voyeuristic tendencies, not only applies, but it seems that the
observatory act in the zoo is even voyeuristic in a way that is impossible to achieve
with inter-human gazes. The observatory act in the zoo simultaneous fulfills
requirements for voyeuristic pleasure found in the observing of live beings and in the
observing of representations. The inequality, or asymmetry, normally obtained by
concealment, is provided for by the structure of the zoo itself, the animals are
positioned for viewing, they cannot leave their confinements, they are not meant to
escape to zoo visitors gaze, this replaces the need for actual concealment of the
visitors. The diminishment of the distance, possible with representations, to obtain
the intimacy, is enabled by the fact that the animals in the structure of he zoo are
representations of actual animals, positioned in a space that is reminiscent of their
habitat, but functions solely like a theatre stage. The boundaries, the walls, ditches
and fences, between the visitor and the animal paradoxically enable close
approaching of the animal. The fact that the elephants in Winograndʼs photograph
are observed from such a close distance by the two couples, is only because of the
fact the zoo divided them from the animals.
However, although the zoo seems like a place where voyeuristic pleasure is to
be obtained, Berger argues that “the zoo cannot but disappoint”, since it is visited in
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order to see real animals (Berger p. 261). But the pleasure derived from observing
them in the zoo is coming from the fact that the zoo as a structure transforms these
observations in voyeuristic ones. We want to see real animals in the zoo, but derive
pleasure from the fact that they are readily available representations. “The zoo to
which people go to meet animals, to observe them, to see them, is, in fact, a
monument to the impossibility of such encounters (Berger, p. 259).” Although most
zoo visitors might not think of themselves as voyeurs, the entertainment they obtain
in a zooʼs is arguably deriving more from how observation is enabled by the zooʼs
construction, and the representations it offers, than by the sole fact that animals are
observed. These animals are in fact not real animals, but live ones that are
positioned to represent actual wild ones.
3.2. Looking at Looking at Animals in the Zoo
The analysis of the gaze within Winograndʼs photograph was, although shortly
mentioned when wielding Burginʼs view on what constitutes for a voyeuristic gaze,
mainly focussed on the situation in the zoo itself and not specialized on the
photographic gaze that Winogrand bestowed upon that situation. However the fact
that we were able to analyze these gazes in such a way, was offered because
Winogrand photographed the situation. Although many zoo visitors make
photographs, Winograndʼs photograph is not comparable with the photographs that
are made when the zoo visitor directs his camera towards the animal in their
confinement. The photograph resulting from such an action would be a copy, so to
speak, of the intra-diegetic gaze itself. Winograndʼs photograph however does not
copy this gaze, but registers it, it does not represent that gaze itself, but that fact that
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it is there. Although Winogrand was more or less in the same place as the zoo
visitors when he took it, he literally and figuratively took a step back from, or outside
of the zoo situation depicted. The resulting photograph, due to it being a photograph,
therefore offers a possibility to think and analyze this gaze from a different stance
than would have been possible with a photograph that zoo visitors make and also
from a different stance than would have been possible when observing the two
couples directly. “…putting four edges around a collection of information or facts
transforms it. A photograph is not what was photographed, it's something else…the
picture plays with the question of what actually is happening… They call the meaning
of things into question (Winogrand as quoted in Hooper).” Winogrand used
photographic observing in order to capture the act of observing in the zoo, one of the
observational acts, from the couple underneath the box could, as mentioned earlier,
could be considered a metaphor for the photograph act. The coupleʼs gaze that
observes the elephants directly, can be seen as metaphorical for the observing of
representations. This means that there are metaphors, for both the creational act of
the taking the photograph and the observing act that is bestowed upon the
photograph afterwords, somehow present within the photograph. The photograph
could be therefore considered a metapicture, being not only about what it depicts,
human and animal behaviour in the zoo, but about photography itself (Mitchell, p.
35). The idea of the metapicture is developed by W.J.T. Mitchell in order to analyze
how a picture by elements within itself, can explain itself. Mitchell, with this theory,
tries to explain the pictorial from within its own capabilities using its own
characteristics, comparable with how semiology and semiotics analyze texts in
structure, but not with language itself as its main descriptive structure but the picture
itself, the picture is the theory. “If there is such a thing as meta-language it should
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hardly surprise that there is such a thing as a metapicture (Mitchell, p. 82).” The
quote by Winogrand which this chapter started with, is usually reproduced as such,
however when enlarging it, making use from its original context, it is as follows:
“ʻI don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is
to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions
(Winogrand as quoted in Hooper.)”
By stating, that he does not want to ʻsayʼ anything, the use of the idea of the
meta-picture by Mitchell, in which the picture itself is the theory, seems valid for
analyzing Winograndʼs photograph. Victor Burgin in “Photography, Phantasy,
Function” in Thinking Photography (1982), also quotes Winogrand, indicating that the
photographic medium according to Winogrand, was able of describing itself (Burgin,
p. 206): “I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the
medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by
describing it as it is.”
A metapicture is not a category of pictures, but every picture can be regarded
a metapicture when its self-referentiality is considered analyzing it: “Pictorial self
reference is not exclusively a formal, internal feature that distinguishes some
pictures, but a pragmatic functional feature, a matter of use and context. ANY picture
that is used to reflect on the nature of pictures is a metapicture (Mitchell p. 57).”
Mitchell does describe three main categories of meta-pictures, he does that with
examples in which he refers to formal components. Winograndʼs photograph, can,
partially due to it being a photograph, be considered a combination, or as having
qualities of, the first two forms of meta-picture Mitchell describes (Mitchell, p. 56):11
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1. The picture that represents itself, creating a referential circle or ʻmiss en
abymeʼ.
2. The picture that is generically self referential; the sort of picture that
represents a class, the picture about pictures.
3.2.1. Winogrand’s Photograph as Representing Itself
Winograndʼs photograph can be considered as self-referential when regarding
the couple on the left, underneath the cardboard box; a ʻmiss en abymeʼ but not in
the most literal way. A ʻmiss en abymeʼ can be described as a formal technique in
which an image contains a smaller copy of itself. Mitchell regarding his first
description of meta-picture, furthermore refers to images that display the creator of
the image while working on that image. Mitchel offers an example of a cartoon from
The New Yorker magazine that depicts a figure that is drawing a line, that line when
followed however, is the same line the figure is drawn with (Mitchell, p. 39). He
furthermore discusses arguably the most the famous example of a ʻmiss en abymeʼ:
Las Meninas by Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velazguez, in which Velazguez himself is
pictured while, presumably, because not visible to the viewer, creating the painting
itself, pencil in hand (Mitchell, p. 59). The direct representation of the creator while
creating, in this way, is possible due to the characteristics of both drawing and
painting that enable the artist to premeditate the contents and entrust them to the
paper or canvass accordingly. Hilde van Gelder and Helen Westgeest in “Self-
Reflective Photography” in Photography Theory In Historical Perspective (2011) also
discuss the meta-picture referring to Mitchell as well as to Victor I. Stoichitaʼs The
Self-Aware Image. An Insight Into Early Modern Meta-Painting (1997 [1993]). Van
Gelder and Westgeest point out that both these authorʼs mainly discuss the meta-
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picture in relation to painting and drawing. The difference in the possibility of
including the creator of the image, within the image, between painting and drawing
on the one side and photography on the other, is due to “the nature of the production
processes in these media (Van Gelder and Westgeest p. 202).” Opposed to painting
and drawing, which are produced progressively, the actual photographic production
by the photographer, regardless of the exposure time, coincides with the moment
that the shutter is released. This does not mean per se that the creative process of
making the picture is encapsulated in this moment, ideas on where and when this
takes place have been widely discussed; taking versus the making of a photograph,
for now however, the moment of shutter release and its implications are considered
from a mostly practical point of view. A photographer that wants to include himself in
the photograph while taking it, that is in combination with his camera, cannot do so,
since for that moment to be represented in the photograph, it had to be in front of the
camera, within the lens its optical reach, when the shutter is released. Releasing the
shutter from a distance is a possibility for the photographer to be included in the
photograph, however one could argue that this method, although delivering a
photograph, is more comparable with the premeditation that can concerns drawing
and painting. If the photographer wantʼs to include himself in the photograph that he
is making, while making it, he has to make use of a mirror.
Although Winogrand does not use a mirror to include himself in the
photograph, the couple covered by the cardboard box - a primitive camera - could be
considered a metaphor of the photographic act Winogrand himself performs
simultaneously. He observes the couple from behind his camera, accentuating, by
exposing their observational method, his own voyeurism; as we had established the
gaze of the couple could be considered voyeuristic, because of the concealment of
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the cardboard box and the fact that it is directed at animals in the zoo. Winograndʼs
photographic act furthermore can be considered voyeuristic in itself, making the
metaphor affirmative of itself, creating a vicious circle. Both Susan Sontag in “Platoʼs
Cave” in On Photography (1977) and Clive Scott in “The Nature of Photography” in
The Spoken Image: Photography and Language (1999) describe the act of taking a
photograph as somehow inherently voyeuristic. Sontag defines the photographic act
as setting up a “chronic voyeuristic relation to the world”; it is not a part of direct
confrontational looking, but the look is mediated through a camera that the
photographer feels compelled to “put…between [himself] and whatever is
remarkable that [he] encounters (Sontag, pp. 10 − 11).” Scottʼs argument for this,
also mentions the importance of framing that Winogrand himself considered pivotal
for photographyʼs transformative power, as material for the voyeuristic nature of
photography: “Voyeurism is looking through the camera, through a frame, through a
window, isolating and fetishizing, breaking down responsibilities connected with the
continuity of experience and one's own visibility; the camera, one comes to believe,
conceals the photographer (Scott, p. 31).”
The putting-in-between of the camera seemingly softens and de-intensifies
the intrusive aggressiveness of the direct gaze, as does the cardboard box for the
couple on the left. The camera adds a purpose or reason to voyeuristic staring. In a
way, it creates an alibi for both photographer and photographed object. Photography
enables the voyeuristic moment to linger on through capturing it, the photograph that
is produced is makes the photographed situation readily available afterwords.
However this immediately exposes the problematic consequence of photography for
obtaining voyeuristic pleasure. By translating the momentary actual situation on to a
photograph, where it is represented motionless, the secretive component that is part
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of the thrill that causes voyeuristic pleasure gets lost. The chance of getting caught
peeping is annihilated by the photographic process. The pleasure of voyeurism can
only be relived by engaging in the act of voyeurism again. With this in mind,
combined with Sontagʼs explanation of the photographic act as an appropriating one,
that ʻsomethingʼ that Winogrand wanted to experience photographed, can also be
explained as the innate voyeuristic photographic act itself (Sontag, p. 4, p. 197). The
paradox of the photographic act being innately voyeuristic and facilitating voyeuristic
looking, but not capable of reproducing or capturing the voyeuristic pleasure is in line
with the notion on voyeurism and viewing by Rudinow that “voyeurs do not have a
chance of gaining satisfaction (Rudinow, p. 173).” In this way again Winograndʼs
gaze repeats, and can be considered represented by, the couplesʼ gazes in the
photograph. They are not able to see the ʻrealʼ animals they came to see, but the
entertainment they experience is only possible because of the innate voyeurism of
observing animals, that are mere representations, in the zoo.
3.2.2. Winogrand’s Photograph as Generically Self Referential
The couple on the right could be considered as representative of watching
representations in general, and in this way an example of a metapicture of the
second form that Mitchell describes: the meta-picture that represents a class of
pictures; the ʻpicturesʼ or representations, that the elephants are, due to their being
positioned in the structure of the zoo. Winograndʼs own voyeuristic unequal
photographic gaze also duplicates this gaze, but now there is no literal metaphor to
be found for the camera. The camera in this gaze, is substituted by the inter-specie-
ality of the encounter; whereas the photographic camera can add to the justification
of staring or observing towards a human subject, the characteristics of the animal
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subject - the elephants - with its inability for expressing its discomforts or shame,
when present, make the justification of this gaze by a camera obsolete (Bousé, p
23). The photographic gaze of Winogrand seems to relate to the human subject as
the human gaze by the couple does to the animal subject: the elephants.
Andy Grundberg in “The Final ʻfactsʼ of Garry Winogrand” [1988], and Carl
Chiarenza in Standing On The Corner... Reflections Upon Winogrand's Photographic
Gaze: Mirror Of Self Or World? (1991) both typified Winograndʼs photography as
metaphorical or mirror-like for society and human behaviour (Grundberg, p.78, and
Chiarenza, p. 50). They both argue this, because the motive of observation, and
herewith voyeurism “…is consistently present in the work of Winogrand; Watchers
watch the watchers (Chiaranza, p. 50).” That Winogrand chose the zoo is not
surprising because he recognized the similarities between animals and humans in
their own and their reciprocal gazes: “Winogrand returned [to the zoo]…to follow up
his observation that the gestures, gazes, and expressions of ʻfreeʼ humans and
caged animals had a number of characteristics in common…There is an
overwhelming sense of the presence of the voyeuristic urge in man and animal _ the
obsession (compulsion) to look. (Chiaranza, p. 50).”, “The men, woman and animals
in his [Winograndʼs] pictures are seldom seen alone, and almost never out of
context; they exist as social beings, revealing themselves only through their
interrelations with others (Grundberg, p. 78).”
The motive of observation can be found more often in photography: the
medium, by isolating the observatory action deployed by the subject, reveals it. In
Winograndʼs photograph the registered observational act is aimed at animals, yet it
can be seen as metaphorical for the human gaze towards humans as well, the
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elephants represent representations in general by being in the zoo and also by being
photographed as such, could arguably represent the objectified human subject.
Because although different in their abilities to communicate when observed directly,
photography renders the animal and the human subject equal. In Winograndʼs
photograph, the specific characteristics, of as well the location: the zoo, the subjects:
the humans and the animals, en the medium trough which these are shown to us:
photography, offered possibilities to analyze the photograph as a meta-picture, and
the information about what it depicts, was revelaed because it is depicted.
3.3. Looking at an Exotic Dancer and Looking at that Act
The photo we will compare to Winograndʼs photograph is taken at a girl-
show12, this location shares characteristics with the zoo in how it enables and
constructs observation: The zoo as a peep-show is a comparison offered by Randy
Malamud; cash is payed in order to engage in an undisturbed observational act. The
female dancer and the zoo animal are both readily available (Malamud, p. 222). In
this particular photograph that stems from the series: “Carnaval Strippers” (1976) by
American documentary photographer Susan Meiselas (1948), a man is
photographed while apparently busy watching a female dancer in a girl-show.
Apparently, because in the photograph he is looking outwards from the frame
towards the photographer and not, any longer presumably, towards the female
dancer. This photograph is comparable to that of Winogrand, on the level that a
photographer (Meiselas) captures an (in this case interrupted) observatory act (the
man watching the dancer) at a location that is constructed for that observatory act to
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take place (the “girl” show), the object of the gaze within the photograph, however, is
a human and not like in Winograndʼs photograph animals (the elephants).
3.3.1. The Difference That Makes a Difference
To examine the similarities, and maybe more importantly, the differences that
arise when observing an objectified human subject (female dancer) versus an
objectified animal subject (the zoo animal) directly and trough photography, we will
make use of Derek Bouséʼs “The problem of images” in Wildlife Films (2000). Bousé
discusses the animal as subject in wildlife films, however since he argues this
particular animal subject is also not a real animal, but a representation that is
moulded and edited into a representation that fulfills certain expectations we might
have about it based on earlier experiences, the “differences that makes a difference”
between human and animal he proposes, can be used here (Bousé, p. 23 − 24). For
both the zoo animal, and the female dancer and their surroundings are reminiscent
of a realistic situation in a way; an elephant-herd in the wild, a random woman
dancing in a discotheque, but in reality they are mere representations within a
constructed and edited interpretation of these situations that contain only fragments
of the ones they refer to, just like wildlife films do according to Bousé (Bousé, p. 5 −
6). Basically film is a very long sequence of photographs, in this way the wildlife film
is not only comparable to the situation depicted in Winograndʼs and Meseilasʼ
photographs, as a structure that moulds animals into representations, also the film
itself is a representation like those photographs themselves. Bousé argues that
“…when a subject of a film is a living, feeling being, yet has no way of
comprehending the implications of being filmed or the power of visual images and
representation in general; when it never will understand these things in the future,
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(unlike humans who are filmed as infants)…the filmmaker enters into a relationship
with the subject that is different from all others… (Bousé, p. 23 − 24).” The
differences Bousé describes seem to be focussed on issues relating privacy and
consent on the one hand and interchangeability on the other.
3.3.2. Privacy and Consent
According to Bousé, Animals do not seem to suffer from embarrassment from
public display or violation of their privacy in a way humans can definitely identify – it
is generally held that they do not have privacy. Therefore they do not enjoy rights of
privacy and “informed consent”, in addition to being difficult to obtain, is considered
inapplicable and irrelevant, providing for entirely different kinds of behaviors to be
shown (urination, mating, etc, etc,) usually without objection, not only from the
subject, but also the audience (Bousé, p. 23 − 24). The female dancer and the zoo
animal are both readily available, with the main difference that the animal is not able,
and the woman not expected, to react or express their opinion about being observed.
The female dancer is alive and capable of reacting to being observed, however the
female dancerʼs purpose is to be observed and the observatory act performed by the
men is carried out in mutual agreement of both origin and object of the gaze.13 In
Winograndʼs photograph however, the elephants are alive as well, but do not have
adequate means to communicate their agreement or disagreement with being stared
at or to be photographed, the gaze between human and animal is, as Berger
describes it, dual, balancing between comprehension and non-comprehension,
recognition and alienation (Berger, p. 252). Whereas in the ʻgirl-showʼ situation the
agreement between observer and observed positions and maintains the woman
dancing on the stage, in the zoo this ʻagreementʼ to position and maintain the animal
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so that it can be observed, is made trough fences and walls and by facilitating the
animals with food, mates, and confinements that are reminiscent of their natural
surroundings.
3.3.3. Interchangeability
In wildlife films, animals are interchangeable, footage of many different look-
alike animals may be edited so that it seemingly represents one singular animal. For
an animal to be a look-alike, it only needs to be the same size and species,
sometimes even gender does not play a role, when the gender differences in a
species are inconspicuous. The narrative of a seemingly single penguin for example,
first in search of his parents, then for food and then growing up to be an adult
penguin, can be constructed from footage shot a multiple locations, on multiple
occasions, with many different animals in the wild or even in captivity (Bousé, p. 23 −
24).14 In the zoo, the animal also is not a unique being, each lion is every lion, the
groupings of different species in the zoo function as icon for their kind, they are there
to answer to the idea the visitors have of these animals. In the zoo one organizes a
visit accordingly. “First we go and see the ʻthe elephantsʼ and afterwords ʻthe
monkeysʼ and then to the birdhouse!”15 They do not have personality or specific
treats per animal, only per specie. In this way the situation depicted in Meseilas
photograph is similar, the women dancing in shows, purely for the visual
entertainment it offers, also are not personalties and do not have a singular identity.
They represent a class of woman, the available class, the potentially sexually
promisquous class.
Both in the zoo and in ʻgirl-showsʼ, there are however instances in which the
interchangeable animal or woman gets, or is attributed with an identity. Several
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years ago a small polar bear in the Berlin zoo rose to worldwide fame, that we have
come to know as Knut. However, not many people would have recognize that exact
baby polar-bear as Knut. On the contrary, people started to use that name to identify
other baby polar bears. When the real Knut became a grown polar-bear, remarkably
bigger and clearly more veracious than his juvenile self, the name Knut did not even
seem to fit him. He was absorbed back into the pack of anonymous polar bears in
Berlin, while his name lived on when it was given to little white polar bear formed
candy and stuffed animal toys. Exotic dancers, seldom reveal their original name or
identity, they do sometimes carry names, but these are usually insinuative, or exotic
sounding, pseudonyms. In both the zoo and the ʻgirl-showʼ the identity that seems to
apply to some of the animals and girls, is also a representation. Just as
interchangeable and only one more element, like the fake rocks in the zoo, or the
feminine sexualized clothing worn by the exotic dancer, that adds to the theatre like
structure of the situation.
In photographing the situations in the zoo and the ʻgirl-showʼ, however,
differences arise between the human and the animal subject regarding
interchangeability. Which can be made clear through the way in which Winogrand
and Meiselas have included the objectified subjects, the objects of the intra-diegetic
gazes, in their photographs. One of the elephants in Winograndʼs photograph can be
seen looking back at the couples, and his face and gaze are also clearly discernible
for Winograndʼs camera and therewith for the viewer. However, this gaze is not
making the elephant identifiable as a specific elephant. It is still ʻan elephantʼ, that
for an untrained viewer - his keeper will maybe recognize him - will be hard to single
out from group of elephants. Meiselas, in framing her photograph, has cut of the
dancerʼs head, the face of the objectified subject, this causes for an accentuation of
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the impersonal character of the scene, and the dancer. This specific woman is a
representation for a woman. Should her head, and face, have been included in the
shot, the dancer would have become a singular identity for the viewer in theory, for
although this woman is unknown to the viewer, her having a face would have made
her an individual amongst other women and, in theory, discernible from a group of
women. When observing the woman directly, arguably her face is also on display,
however amidst a continuous action and surrounded by the constructed situation,
sounds, temperature and smells and textual context - the sign above the ʻgirl-showʼsʼ
entrance. The time for contemplating that face, registering it and memorizing it,
available when it would have been on the photograph is not present in the same way
when its regarded directly. Since photographyʼs ability to attribute an air of
authenticity to an artificial situation, by transforming the situation into a two-
dimensional representation stripped from clear indicators of its artificiality, the
dancerʼs head needed to be invisible,in order to duplicate the impersonal character
of the scene in Meiselasʼ photograph. To portray the elephant in this photograph as
the objectified other, the representation that it constitutes in the zoo, Winogrand did
not need obscure the elephants head, since the interchangeability of the animal, is
not effected by photographing it, indeed it arguably intensifies it. For the context that
could have attributed the elephant individual qualities is erased, the interchangeable
character of the animal subject is successfully used in wildlife films as Bousé argues,
whereas, should a human protagonist be exchanged from scene to scene in a film or
documentary, it would immediately unmask it as an artificial construction.
The main difference when observing an animal or a human lies within their
(in)ability to communicate and the consequences this has for their privacy. Animals
cannot like humans express their agreement or disagreement with being observed.
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The concept of shame and privacy as it is familiar for humans seem to not exist in
that way among animals. However, there exist situations in which humans are
observed by other humans in a way comparable to the way of observing int the zoo.
The example here is a ʻgirl-showʼ in which a female dances on a stage in order to
entertain the public that has come, and probably payed, to observe her. The
agreement that can be made between humans cannot be made between a human
and an animal. The dancer on the stage is free to leave that stage in theory, yet she
remains there because of the agreement. The animals in the zoo that are to be
observed while engaging in their ʻnaturalʼ behaviour, must be confined, not by a
verbal agreement, but by their surroundings.
The second factor that sets the animal subject apart from the human subject
when observation is concerned according to Bousé, is the interchangeability of the
animal. However in both the situations depicted by Winogrand and Meiselas the
objectified subject of the gaze is an interchangeable one. This, in the girl-show
situation, is also due to the agreement that is made between origin and object of
gaze there. The girl dancing there is a representation that represents a class of
woman. However the when the objectified human subject is photographed the
interchangeability of it disappears, due to the authenticity the photographic medium
can grant an artificial situation. This would have unmasked the artificial identity of the
female dancer in Meiselas photograph. When an animal in the zoo is photographed
this unmasking of it being a representation also can happen, but has an opposite
effect. Should we have analyzed photographs here, that were made by the coupleʼs
in Winograndʼs, or by the male observer in Meiselasʼ photograph, we would not be
able anymore to distinguish the elephants or the dancer from the original beings, an
elephant in the wild, a woman dancing in a discotheque, they represent and identify
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them as representations. However whereas the photo of the women would have
granted her a, in theory, discernible identity, the elephant would still be ʻan elephantʼ.
3.4. Voyeurism as Inevitabilaty
We have established that the gaze in a zoo is inherently voyeuristic, not due
to literal concealment, making the action performed by he couple of the left rather
futile, but by the structure of the zoo itself, which presents live animals as
representations of their wild counterparts in a setting that is reminiscent of their
original habitat, but merely is a theatre-like stage in which the animals are positioned
as actors; the concealment, enabling the inequality, or asymmetry, Rudinow argues
is necessary for an act to be voyeuristic is provided for by the zoo itself. The
impossibility for the voyeur to obtain satisfaction is also present in the zoo, since the
reason to go there is to experience entertainment by observing ʻreal animalsʼ, yet the
entertainment does not originate from the observing of the animals but from the
voyeuristic nature of the gaze that is enabled in the zoo, which is voyeuristic because
the animals are in fact not “real”, but representations.
This analysis was possible due to the fact that Winogrand has photographed
the scene depicted. The resulting photograph, by isolating and framing the
observatory acts in the zoo, functions as a metaphor for as well the act of observing
performed by Winogrand in making the photograph as well as a metaphor for
observing the photograph itself. By the doubling of the observatory acts performed
within the photograph, in the photograph itself, Winogrand accentuates the
voyeuristic nature of these observatory acts and of that performed by himself and
along with that, the observatory act that is performed by the onlooker of the
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photograph. Because it is a photograph, and not a painting or a drawing, the
doubling of the creator of the image while making it, in the classical way was not
possible, the metaphor for Winogrand can be however distinguished in the couple
covered by a cardboard box. The couple on the right, whoʼs gaze is seemingly
undisturbed, when observing the animals, can be seen as a metaphor for viewing
representations, in which concealment is also not necessary because of the inability
of a representation to react and discover being stared at. Winograndʼs photograph
can therefore be considered a metapicture that is referring to itself and as a
metapicture that refers to the class of observing representations of objectified others,
whether this be classical representations like two-dimensional photographs, or the
representations that the elephants are in the zoo. Winograndʼs photography in
general can even be argued to be made as metapicture, based on his utterances on
how he wanted to use the photographic medium as descriptive apparatus on his
own; he does not want to ʻsayʼ anything, but wants to deliver an image, that due to its
innate formal characteristics and content, could explain something about what it
depicts. Arguably this, is the meta-picture that Mitchell opposes to meta-language,
the picture that does not illustrate written theory, but is the theory.
The difference between an animal subject and a human subject as object,
concerning the observing of it, can be found mainly in the communicative and
interchangeable characteristics they have. Whereas humans beings in a photograph
are regarded from a personal individual perspective, the animal is seen as part of a
larger, more grand system that is not stirred by individual cases of change and
seems a perpetual entity in which there is no progress or evolution, but only
repetitions of fixed motives or behaviors by exchangeable animal individuals. The
animal is always interchangeable, whereas the human subject is only
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interchangeable when it is presented that way, as part of an agreement that can be
made because of the possibility of communication in-between humans, this
interchangeability can be erased by photographing the interchangeable human
subject, like the exotic dancer, whereas this is not possible when photographing an
animal. Observing animals is arguably always voyeuristic. Whether this is done
obscured, directly or trough photograph.
With the differences proposed by Bousé in mind, the following statement on
voyeurism by Rudinow, could possibly be turned around: “In general, one cannot
enter into any relationship with a subject which is mutual, reciprocal, or symmetrical,
insofar and so long as one treats it voyeuristically (Rudinow, p176).” The kind of
relationship that Rudinow states to be unavoidable when one treats a subject in a
voyeuristic manner, is namely inherent to observing an animal subject, in whatever
what way this is done: The relationship one enters with an animals is always un-
mutual, un-reciprocal and asymmetrical due to their incapability of communication,
resulting in the impossibility to establish agreements, and their interchangeability as
singular beings, due to them being from another species.
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Conclusion
Through the three case studies the animal subject in photography was
investigated in diverse appearances as ʻotherʼ in photographic representations. We
can conclude from these case studies that the animal subjects indeed functions
differently throughout various genres of photography, however, in all three case
studies certain aspects inherent to the animal subject have proven itself to be pivotal
in how the animal subject is, and can be represented in photography. Animals as
photographic subject cannot seamlessly be analyzed like a human subject because
some characteristics set them apart from the human subject. Some similarities to the
human subject, however, make some aspects of photographic theory which focus on
the human subject applicable to them.
In all three case studies the fact that one cannot communicate with an animal
in a way that makes it possible to instruct them or make agreements with them
comparable to how this can be done with a human is of great influence on how they
are represented in photography. The nature of the influences on the photographs,
however, differs from genre to genre and is dependent on the technical state
photography was in at the time. In proto-instantanious photography this resulted in
the fact that most animals represented in photography were dead, since the long
exposure times needed for photography at the time made them difficult to capture
when alive, appearing as taxidermically prepared specimens in lifelike situations.
The technical state of photography at the time also made the dead human a popular
subject. The difference however is that whereas photography replaced the need for
preservation of the dead human body itself, photography actually fueled the practice
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of taxidermy. Up until today photography of prepared animals can be read as
photographs of actual live animals, as is demonstrated by Hiroshi Sugimoto.
When photography became instantaneous, living animals, especially in the
wild, were still hard to capture. In order to photograph wild animals, hunting
techniques were wielded and the resulting photographs were seen as hunting
trophies rather than transparent representations of nature associated with what we
now call wildlife photography. These hunting trophies functioned in the discourse of
colonial photography, they established the superiority of its Western maker over
nature, and therewith over the territory they were captured in. Alongside photographs
of these animals, photographs of indigenous peoples were made for the same
purpose. And not only for the same purpose: by stripping the human subject of the
characteristics that made it human ( being also indicators of modern human
civilization), the human subject in these photographs was transported into the realm
of animal photography, making it possible to view and understand them in the same
way. The uncivilized ʻotherʼ that is on display in these photographs was constructed,
but was seen as a trustworthy representation, because it was communicated to the
western public through photography, which at that time was still believed to be a
conveyer of truth.
Whereas the dead animal and the wild animal both exist in a situation outside
of our western world - and therefore are more easily can be defined as an ʻotherʼ -
the animal in the Zoo does not. When thinking int the act of voyeurism as creating an
ʻotherʼ since the voyeurism gaze is marked by an inequality, the Zoo animal is an
ʻotherʼ that coexists within our own culture. For the human subject to exist as other
within our own culture, is has to be outside of it. With a human subject the agreement
can be made to act as ʻotherʼ, like the exotic dancer in Meiselasʼ photograph shows.
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When observed in that place the human subject is in many ways comparable to how
animals are observed in the zoo, when both situations are photographed however, a
second characteristic of the animal subject is recognisable that appeared in all case
studies: the interchangeability of the animal. When the face of an animal is visible in
a photograph it does not grant that animal a hypothetical discernible singular identity,
opposed to the case of the human subject. The interchangeability of the animal
subject in colonial photography was apparent in the fact that the animal by nature
exists outside of time: there is no discernible difference between an animal from
different eras.
Taking photographs of animals differs from taking photographs of human
being mainly in the impossibility of communication, and in the fact that, being not
from the same species, is cannot be recognized as having a singular identity, like
can be done with the human subject. However in every genre of photography these
singular characteristics function differently and alongside the human subject, which
actually, when viewed as other, is granted some of the qualities that set the animal
subject apart.
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Illustrations Introduction
Fig. 1: Albrecht Dürer (1471 – 1528), Rhinoceros, woodcut, 1515, British Museum, London
Fig. 2: Jan van Kessel (the Elder) (1626 − 1679), An Allegory of Africa, about 1665, Oil on copper, Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich
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Chapter 1
Fig. 3: Lady Clementina Hawarden (1822 − 1865), Dog balancing on two chairs, about 1861, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Fig. 4: John Dillwyn Llewellyn, (1810 − 1882), Duck, 1850ʼs
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Lauralouise Hendrix, Master Thesis Film and Photographic Studies
Fig. 5: John Dillwyn Llewellyn, (1810 − 1882), Otter, 1850ʼs
Fig. 6: Photographer unknown, Thanathos archive
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Lauralouise Hendrix, Master Thesis Film and Photographic Studies
Fig. 7: Photographer unknown, carte de visite of a young girl, posed as if sleeping, c.1870, Thanathos archive
Fig. 8: photographer unknown, retrieved from http://barrelrider.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/memento-mori/ august 8
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Fig. 9: Photographer unknown, retrieved from http://brightbytes.com/collection/images/on_bed.jpg
Fig. 10: Hiroshi, Sugimoto (1948), Hyaena - jackal - Vulture, 1976, Gelatine Silver print, Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo
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Fig. 11: Dr. Tiffany Jenkins (photographer), Jeremy Benthamʼs Auto-Icon on display at University College, London. Chapter 2
Fig. 11: George Shiras 3rd (1859 – 1942), three deer, 1906, National Geographic Society, Washington
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Fig. 12: Photographer unknown, Zulu wedding, 1896, National Geographic Society, Washington Chapter 3
Fig. 13: Winogrand, Garry (1928 − 1984), photograph published on page 27 from The Animals, 1969, Museum of Modern Art, New York
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Fig. 14: Susan Meiselas (1948), photograph from Carnival Strippers, 1976
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Bibiography Introduction
- Barthes, Roland, (2000 [1980]), Camera Lucida, London: Vintage Books
- Bazin, André, (1960 [1945]), “The Ontology of the Photographic Image”, trans. Gray,
Hugh, in Film Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 4. pp. 4-9
- Berger, John, “Why Look At Animals?” (2007 [1980]), in The Animals Reader: The
Essentials Classic And Contemporary Writings, eds. Kalof, L. and Fitzgerald, A., Oxford:
Berg Publishers, pp. 251-261
- Brower. Matthew, (2011), Developing Animals: Wildlife and Early American photography,
Minneapolis: University of minnesota Press
- Burt, Jonathan, (2007 [2001]), “The Illumination Of The Animal Kingdom: The Role Of
Light And Electricity In Animal Representation,” in The Animals Reader: The Essentials
Classic And Contemporary Writings, eds. Kalof, L. and Fitzgerald, A., Oxford: Berg
Publishers, pp. 289-301
- Gombrich, E-H, (1960) “Truth and the Stereotype an Illusion Theory of Representation” in
Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, New York:
Pantheon Books, pp. 72 – 87,
- Grady, John and Mechling, Jay, (2003) “Putting Animals In The Picture” in Visual Studies,
Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 92-95
- Luz, Christiane,(1987), Das Exotische Tier In Der Europäischen Kunst, Stuttgart-Bad
Cannstatt: Cantz
- Mitchell, W. J. T., (1994), Picture Theory: Essays On Verbal And Visual Representation,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press
- Scott, Clive, (1999),The Spoken Image: Photography and Language, London: Reaktion
Books
- Sekula, Allan, (1990 [1989]), “The Body and the Archive” in The Contest Of meaning:
Critical Histories of Photography, ed. Richard Bolton, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, pp.
340 – 388
- Sontag, Susan, (2008 [1977]), On Photography, London: Penquin Books
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- Wells, Liz, (2000 [1988]), “Surveyors and Surveyed” in Wells, Liz (ed.), Photography: A
Critical Introduction, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 67-72
- Winogrand, Garry, (1969) The Animals, New York: The Museum of Modern Art
Chapter 1: A case study from early photography: The animal as other compared to the human other as dead.
- Barthes, Roland, (2000 [1980]), Camera Lucida, London: Vintage Books
- Bazin, André, (1960 [1945]), “The Ontology of the Photographic Image”, trans. Gray,
Hugh, in Film Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 4 - 9
- Brower. Matthew, (2011), Developing Animals: Wildlife and Early American photography,
Minneapolis: University of minnesota Press
- Burgin, Victor (1982), “Photographic Practice and Art Theory” in Burgin, Victor (Ed.),
Thinking Photography, London: Methuen, pp. 39 - 83
- Gelder, Hilde van, and Westgeest, Helen, (2011), Photography Theory In Historical
Perspective, Wiley and Oxford: Blackwell
- Lanyon, Andrew, (July–September 1984), “Frontispiece: Deer Parking,” in History of
Photography 8, 3.
- Llewellyn, Nigel, (1991), The Art of Death: Visual Culture in the English Death Ritual,
c.1500-1800, London: Reaktion Books
- Ryan, James R. (2000), “ʻHunting with the Cameraʼ: Photography, Wildlife and
Colonialism in Africa”, in Wilbert, C. and Philo, C. (eds.), Animal Spaces, Beastly Places,
London: Routledge, pp. 205 – 222
- Snyder, J. and Allen, N. W., (1975). “Photography, Vision and Representation” in Critical
Inquiry 2, pp. 143-169.
- Sontag, Susan, (2008 [1977]), On Photography, London: Penquin Books
- Thomas, Julia Adeney, (2010), “Comment” in journal of visual culture, volume 9, pp. 421-
424
- Trachtenberg, Alan (ed.), (1980), Classic Essays on Photography, , New York: Leete's
Island Books
- Wells, Liz, (2000 [1988]), Photography: A Critical Introduction, London and New York:
Routledge
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Chapter 2: A case study from wildlife Photography: The animal as other compared to the human other as cultural other.
- Batchen, Geoffrey, (1997), Burning with desire; the conception of photography,
Cambridge: MIT Press
- Berger, John, “Why Look At Animals?” (2007 [1980]), in The Animals Reader: The
Essentials Classic And Contemporary Writings, eds. Kalof, L. and Fitzgerald, A., Oxford:
Berg Publishers, pp. 251-261
- Bousé, Derek, (2000), Wildlife Films, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- Brower. Matthew, (2011), Developing Animals: Wildlife and Early American photography,
Minneapolis: University of minnesota Press
- Burt, Jonathan, (2007 [2001]), “The Illumination Of The Animal Kingdom: The Role Of
Light And Electricity In Animal Representation,” in The Animals Reader: The Essentials
Classic And Contemporary Writings, eds. Kalof, L. and Fitzgerald, A., Oxford: Berg
Publishers, pp. 289-301
- Grady, John and Mechling, Jay, (2003) “Putting Animals In The Picture” in Visual Studies,
Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 92-95
- Grundberg, Andy (1999), Crisis Of The Real. Writings on photography since 1974, New
York: Aperture
- Maxwell, Anne, (1998), Colonial Photography & Exhibitions: representations of the
ʻNativeʼ and the making of European identities, London: Leicester University Press
- Metz, Christian (2002 [1984]) “Photography and Fetish” in Wells, Liz (ed.) The
Photography Reader, New York: Taylor & Francis
- Pultz, John, (1995), The Body And The Lens: Photography from 1839 to the present, New
York: H.N. Abrams
- Ryan, James R. (2000), “ʻHunting with the Cameraʼ: Photography, Wildlife and
Colonialism in Africa”, in Wilbert, C. and Philo, C. (eds.), Animal Spaces, Beastly Places,
London: Routledge, pp. 205 – 222
- Shiras, George 3rd, (July 1906), “Photographing Wild Game With Flashlight and Camera”
in The National Geographic Magazine, Vol. xvii, no. 7., Washington: The National
Geographic Society, pp. 370 – 423
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- Sontag, Susan, (2008 [1977]), On Photography, London: Penquin Books
- Tucker, Jennifer (2005), Nature Exposed : photography as eyewitness in Victorian
science, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
- Wells, Liz, (2000 [1988]), “Surveyors and Surveyed” in Wells, Liz (ed.), Photography: A
Critical Introduction, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 67-72
Chapter 3: The animal as other compared to the human other as object of voyeurism.
- Berger, John, “Why Look At Animals?” (2007 [1980]), in The Animals Reader: The
Essentials Classic And Contemporary Writings, eds. Kalof, L. and Fitzgerald, A., Berg
Publishers, Oxford, pp. 251-261
- Bousé, Derek (2000), Wildlife Films, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
- Burgin, Victor (1982), “Looking at Photographs” in Burgin, Victor (Ed.), Thinking
Photography, London: Methuen, pp. 142-153
- Burgin, Victor (1982), “Photography, Phantasy, Function” in Burgin, Victor (Ed.), Thinking
Photography, London: Methuen, pp. 177- 216
- Chiarenza, Carl, (1991) “Standing On The Corner... Reflections Upon Winogrand's
Photographic Gaze: Mirror Of Self Or World? Part I ” in Image volume 34, Nos. 3-4,
International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, pp. 16
– 51
- Gelder, Hilde van, and Westgeest, Helen, (2011), Photography Theory In Historical
Perspective, Oxford: Wiley and Blackwell
- Grundberg, Andy (1999), Crisis Of The Real. Writings on photography since 1974, New
York: Aperture
- Hooper, Kate (2009), Garry Winogrand: “Differring Perspectives”, published on
www.americansuburbx.com, retrieved on 11 april 2011:
http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/12/theory-garry-winogrand-differing.html, no page
numbers available.
- Lutz, Catherine and Collins, Jane (2009 [2003]), “The Photograph as an Intersection of
Gazes: The example of National Geographic” in Wells, Liz (ed.) The Photography
Reader, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 354- 374
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- Malamud, Randy, (2007), ʻZoo Spectatorshipʼ in The Animals Reader: The Essentials
Classic And Contemporary Writings, ed. Kalof, L. and Fitzgerald, A., Oxford: Berg
Publishers.
- Mitchell, W. J. T., (1994), Picture Theory: Essays On Verbal And Visual Representation,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press
- Rudinow, Joel, (1979: Fall), “Representation, Voyeurism, and the Vacant Point Of View”
in Philosophy and Literature, 3:2, pp. 173 – 186
- Scott, Clive, (1999),The Spoken Image: Photography and Language, London: Reaktion
Books
- Sontag, Susan, (2008 [1977]), On Photography, London: Penquin Books
- Wells, Liz (2009) [2003], “The Photographic Gaze” in The Photography Reader, London
and New York: Routledge, pp. 324- 326.
- Winogrand, Garry, (1969) The Animals, New York: The Museum of Modern Art
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Endnotes 1. Sontag mentions animal photography in the opening essay of her book: Platoʼs cave only on page 7 as an example of ʻidealized photographyʼ and later (p 15)makes a comparison to safari hunting to elaborate on ʻthe camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimation of murderʼ p14 2. emphasis and capitalization by Barthes 3. http://www.sugimotohiroshi.com/diorama.html 4. I have conducted this search several times, most recently on 21-08-2012. One should however keep in mind that this is purely a introductory pointer to how I personally have selected the main object of research for this chapter. Google search results are highly personal due to algorithms used by the search engine that take in consideration earlier conducted searches and unlikely to be the same for every user. 5. http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photos/milestones-wildlife-photography/ 6. Note that National geographic does not empathically state that it is a milestone for the National Geographic Society, but rather, although admittedly within the context of their website, as a milestone in wildlife photography in general. The differentiation that in concerns wildlife photography in National Geographic is made only in the accompanying text, but not in the entry/articleʼs title. 7. The full article was extracted from the cd-rom publication by the National Geographic Society: The complete National Geographic that Includes every issue from 1888 to 2009 in digitalized form. 8. emphasis by me 9. for an extensive review on what these techniques are and how they were employed in photography see Matthwe Brower, Developing Animals, Chapter 2: “hunting with the camera.” 10. http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photos/national-geographic-milestones/#/zulu-marriage_246_600x450.jpg 11. the third forms that Mitchell describes, the multi-stable image is not discussed upon further here. 12. This is how Meiselas refers to the event on her website: http://www.susanmeiselas.com/content.php?sec=cs 13. I do not wish to go into the reasons for woman to involve in professions like exotic dancing, in the first place. Arguably the deeper reasons for doing so in some cases are not positive, making the decision to be an exotic dancer, not a voluntary one, when woman are initially forced to do so, literally, or by circumstances dealing with money of abuse, the point here is however, that when already working in this profession, during the actual performance, the mutual agreement is present. 14. I am referring to to La marche de l'empereur (2005), which tells a very personal and emotional story of a young penguin, but is made using many penguins. A different example: in 2010 it was revealed that parts of the footage of two young polar bear cubs in BBCʼs renowned wildlife series Frozen Planet were shot in a ZOO in Rhenen, the netherlands, the general public was quite shocked. http://www.elsevier.nl/web/Nieuws/Wetenschap/324849/BBCserie-Frozen-Planet-deels-opgenomen-in-dierentuin.htm 15. Whereas mammals are still referred too as separate species, when it concerns insects, reptiles and birds the ZOO and its visitors tend to refer to the whole zoological order.
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