Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
globe's fauna through numerous photographs (Cornish undated). Stimulated by
such publications and aided by the increased portability of cameras and the
development of telephoto lenses, 'nature photography' became increasingly popular,
spawning a range of guides and handbooks (Bedford 1909; English 1901; Johnson
1912; Snell 1905). Although aimed at amateur naturalists and photographers in
Britain, many such guides drew on the wider popular fascination with 'wild life'.
Richard Kearton's popular
Wild Life at Home: How to Study and Photograph It
(1898), for example, contained photographs by his brother Cherry which showed
the intrepid photographer working 'in the wild' at home. Cherry Kearton
subsequently embarked on adventures around the world with his camera
photographing 'wildlife' (Kearton 1913). Indeed, the construction of the wildness
of wild animals went hand in hand with the representation of wild spaces (and often
people) of distant lands. And it was beyond Europe to Africa, particularly British
East Africa, that photographer-hunters looked to practise their new sport.
Camera hunting in Africa
Opened up by colonial rule and the Uganda railway in the 1890s, British East
Africa became the prime hunting ground for wealthy tourists, settlers and collectors,
the latter often working on behalf of natural history museums in Europe and
America (Babault 1917). Contemporary guides and publicity literature celebrated
the 'Highlands of British East Africa' as a 'Field of Nature's own Making' and as the
'Greatest Natural Game Preserve in the World' (MacKenzie 1988:200). Big-game
hunters and naturalists similarly referred to it in glowing terms: as a 'paradise' and
'Garden of Eden' (Dickinson 1908). As a number of commentators have noted, the
representation of East Africa as an edenic landscape was central to the production of
African 'nature' as a primeval, untainted domain to be controlled by and for
Europeans. The preservation and conservation strategies set up through such a way
of seeing were to have serious consequences in terms of the environment and its
animal occupants, as well as for the rights of indigenous African populations
(Neumann 1995a). The fact that both European sportsmen and students of natural
history envisaged this part of Africa in such terms made it the ideal place for the
emergence of what became termed 'camera hunting'.
In 1902 the British champion of this new domain of sport and study, Edward
North Buxton, a wealthy Englishman with a taste for foreign hunting and climbing
adventures, described camera hunting as
a field of investigation which promises most interesting results…. [I]t
demands more patience and endurance of heat and other torments, more
knowledge of the habits of animals—in a word, better sportsmanship than a
mere tube of iron with a trigger; and when a successful picture of wild life is
obtained it is a higher achievement, even in the realm of mere sport, than a
trophy, however imposing.
(Buxton 1902: v)
