The human/animal in contemporary South African photography

Abstract

By looking at work by two contemporary South African photographers, this article examines some of the ways in which notions of ‘the animal’ intersect with human subjectivity and representation. Georgio Agamben's formulation of the Western ‘anthropological machine’, which works to shape human ‘otherness’ through recourse to the animal, provides the theoretical framework for examining Pieter Hugo's ‘The Hyena and Other Men’. Invoking ideas of the ‘wild’ in structuring perceptions of socially marginalized groups, Hugo's ambivalent portraits have been accused of exoticising, and eroticising, black masculinity, but, read through Donna Haraway's conceptualization of companion species, may open up new readings of human/animal relationality. The ‘tame’ is no less contested: Daniel Naudé’s ‘Animal Farm’ focuses on particular livestock breeds, demonstrating that domesticated animals can become a site of anxiety around human ‘pedigree’ too.

Keywords:

• Pieter Hugo
• Daniel Naudé
• hyena
• livestock
• South Africa
• photography
• animal
• Agamben
• Haraway

Notes

1. For the significance of notions of “wildness” in colonial encounters, and the production of “race’ through the boundaries of human/animal; civilized/wild, see Anderson (1997) as well as her related article Anderson (2000). For the intersection of philosophy, science and aesthetics in shaping ideas of race, see Bindman (2002). In addition, Blanchard et al. (2008) bring to the fore the importance of modes of display in constructing the colonial “other” as an (animalized) object of the Western gaze.

2. In his interview with hyena handler Abdullahi Ahmadu, journalist Adetokunbo Abiola reports Ahmadu's insistence that this is a ‘tradition exclusive to his family’, and that the entire troupe of entertainers is made up of extended family members. See ‘The Hyena Men’. http://www.stevenson.info/exhibitions/hugo/nigeria_index2.htm (accessed October 9, 2013).

3. These reports, including those in Lagos newspaper This Day, are mentioned in Pieter Hugo's essay ‘The Dog's Master’, as well as Adetokunbo Abiola's essay ‘The Hyena Men’ (2007). See http://www.stevenson.info/exhibitions/hugo/nigeria_index2.htm (accessed October 9, 2013).

4. To view Hugo's many photographic series, including the aforementioned, please visit his gallery site: http://www.stevenson.info/artists/hugo.html

5. Kevin Dunn explores the continued circulation of an image of postcolonial Africa as a place of danger, disorder and decay – grounded in colonial tropes – in contemporary travel accounts and US foreign policy writing (2004). Hugo responds to some of the issues surrounding his photography in an interview with Noah Rabinowitz for Guernica magazine, May 15, 2012, http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/photography-and-other-truths/ With regard to claims of perpetuating the “spectacle” of Africa, it is worth noting the traditional valences of spectacle and masquerade within several African cultures, and the inherently performative nature of the professions “played out” in Hugo's Nollywood (which celebrates often gruesome, phantasmagoric figures such as vampires and zombies) and Hyena Men series. Demos (2012) provides a useful exploration of some of the ways we might read the “spectacle” in Hugo's work.

6. The claim of hermaphroditism in hyenas stems from the similarity of the black spotted hyena (the most prevalent in Africa) female's genitalia to that of the male. For more on both western and African associations with hyenas, see Glickman (1995). For a specific case of the therianthropic link between witches and hyenas, see Rutherford (1999).

7. Anecdotal background information provided by the artist in an informal interview conducted Wednesday 29 August 2011.

8. An under-examined area of Galton scholarship is his use of photographs and data from livestock exhibitions and pedigree studbooks to test his theories of inheritance (as there was not sufficient human data over successive generations to do so). In letters to publications such as Nature, he called for standardized photographic practices for pedigree livestock photography at shows, and for the prints to be made available for scientific study (1898).