Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Lyell claimed in particular that 'charge photographs' (i.e. photographs of charging
animals) were only 'true' if they were taken from in front of the animal, and that few
animals charged unless they were wounded. It was, he argued, much more dangerous
to follow a wounded animal with a rifle than to take photographs of an unwounded
one (Lyell 1923).
Such debates thus focus on the 'sportsmanliness' of camera hunting and show
how resulting photographs were judged on the genuine—or otherwise—spatial
proximity between animal and camera hunter. In common with other camera
hunters, Dugmore suggested that to hunt an animal with a camera meant
approaching it at close range unarmed. However, as noted, like Buxton and
Schillings, he also guaranteed the production of his photographs with a rifle.
Indeed, despite his claims to avoid killing animals while in British East Africa,
Dugmore put himself in positions to get dramatic photographs which more than
occasionally resulted in the animal having to be shot. One photograph shows a
rhinoceros apparently 'photographed at a distance of fifteen yards when actually
charging the author and his companions' (Dugmore 1910:22). However, Dugmore
(1910:22) admitted that, '[a]s soon as the exposure was made a well placed shot
turned the charging beast,' and he described hunting this rhinoceros thus: '[W]hen
he seemed as close as it was wise to let him come I pressed the button, and my
companion, as agreed, fired as he heard the shutter drop.' This was by no means an
unusual practice for camera hunters: Carl Schillings had similar encounters with
rhinoceros where cameras and guns were shot simultaneously (Schillings 1906:229).
This was also true for others like Marius Maxwell, who, inspired by Schillings and
Dugmore, set out for East Africa in 1911, and again in 1921, to 'secure
photographic records of incidents in big-game hunting…to obtain an accurate shot
with the camera instead of the rifle' (Maxwell 1925: xxi). Although Maxwell
claimed to use the rifle only in extreme cases, his attempt to photograph elephants
in the wild 'exactly as the hunter would see it' led him to shoot elephants with both
the camera and rifle (Maxwell 1925:13). Photographs of camera hunters posing with
cameras beside dead animals or holding both gun and camera highlight the
ambiguous place of these individuals. In their very attempt to photograph wild and
living nature, they were capturing, and then re-creating in photographs, the
experience of hunting and killing.
The contradictions implicit in much camera hunting were later highlighted by
the wildlife photographer Cherry Kearton, who criticised the activities of the
photographic hunters who were 'guilty of maiming their “sitters” by gun-shot'
(Kearton undated: 15). Although Kearton did not name his culprits, both Schillings
and Dugmore made photographs of wounded animals (Dugmore 1910: 82-84;
Schillings 1906:321). At issue, according to Kearton, was the violence of
a certain type of photographic expedition or safari, which, whilst pretending
to forward the interests of Natural History, frequently takes as big a toll of
animal life as the Big Game hunter proper, who goes out with the sole and
frank idea of collecting specimens.
