Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Buxton's elevation of camera hunting above ordinary hunting was consistent with
his support for early preservation movements. Buxton was a key player in the
establishment of the Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire in
1903. Made up of many well-to-do naturalists, such as Sir Harry Johnston, and
hunters, such as F.C.Selous, as well as aristocrats and colonial officials such as Lord
Curzon, this powerful society was to prove instrumental in generating information
on the hunting and trade of animals. It was also involved in the setting up of reserves
and the instigation of game laws and regulations throughout Britain's colonies
(MacKenzie 1988:211-16).
On his hunting trips to the game districts of British East Africa and the Sudan in
1899, Buxton (1902:54, 90) claimed to have used his telephotographic naturalist
camera as 'an alternative weapon to the rifle'. Although he included some
photographs of live animals in his published account, notably in the section on
game preservation (Buxton 1902:117, 125), his camera was still clearly a 'weapon'
and only after he had killed all of the 'specimens' he required did he devote himself
'whole-heartedly to the absorbing pursuit of camera stalking' (Buxton 1902:106).
Moreover, Buxton's animated accounts of 'camera stalking' serve ultimately to
reinforce the continuity between shooting and photographing, with both of them
portrayed as adventurous, predatory pursuits (Buxton 1902: 90-93). While he was
concerned with the potential effects of the destruction of wildlife, Buxton was
certainly not anti-hunting. Indeed, he reassured the 'conservative sportsman' that
'no one proposes to interfere with legitimate sport' (Buxton 1902:2).
Nevertheless, Buxton received much praise from non-hunters for his advocacy of
camera hunting. The naturalist and colonial administrator Harry Johnston, for
example, proclaimed Buxton to be
the first sportsman of repute having the courage to stand up before a snobbish
public and proclaim that the best sport for a man of cultivated mind is the
snap-shotting
[sic]
with the camera (with or without the telephotographic
lens), rather than the pumping of lead into elephants, rhinoceroses, antelopes,
zebras, and many other harmless, beautiful, or rare beasts and birds.
(Johnston 1906: xiii)
Johnston (1906: xiii) claimed that camera hunting, along lines pioneered by Buxton
and Schillings, represented 'the sportsmanship of the future'. Carl Schillings, a
hunter in German East Africa during the late 1890s, was especially keen to capture
in photographs the game that he thought would soon disappear forever. In 1903,
having experimented with photographic apparatus (especially magnesium flashlight
techniques for night-time photography), he undertook a large-scale expedition
making photographs and collecting specimens—live and dead—for German
museums and zoos. As well as a retinue of some 170 porters to carry his stores and
photographic equipment, he travelled with his own taxidermist and surgeon. Using
live bait, such as an ox, and trip wires, Schillings secured photographs of lions,
