A woman in a black ball gown stands barefoot on a rock, cradling the head of a zebra. A man in an embroidered jacket hoists a bearded vulture overhead, its taxidermied wings spread as if in flight. A fellow in a sharp suit stands alongside the head and neck of a giraffe that rises like a tree from the dirt. All of these people are standing exactly where they killed the animals whose corpses they so proudly display.
Pierre Abensur made some 70 portraits of hunters and their quarry for Subjective Trophies, an uncomfortable and unusual survey of game hunting around the world. As strange as it might be seeing, say, a wolfskin on someone's floor, it's stranger still to see it in the forest where it once lived.
He got the idea eight years ago while visiting friends who decorated their home with trophies. Abensur found himself fascinated as they recounted the hunt in minute detail, and curious as to why they stuffed the animals. "They looked like strange totems to me," he says. "The destructive act of killing was followed by a [temptation] to give life again."
Abensur wanted to replicate the elegant look of 19th century paintings showing the wealthy on a hunt, so he asked his friends to pose in their finest on the very spot where they killed the animal. They agreed, as did other friends who hunt. Eventually, he met more hunters through clubs, tour guides and even gunsmiths. Some expressed reservations, suspicious of his motives, but others eagerly agreed to be photographed.
Shooting the photos took him far from his home in Nice, France, to places like Mali, Bukina Faso, and Argentina. Reaching these far-flung locations was an adventure that saw him crossing the Mongolian tundra in truck alongside a big bear and rafting off the coast of Finland with a stuffed seal. Upon arriving, Abensur always took his time setting up his large format camera and lights, which explains why his subjects appear bored and aloof.
Many of the hunters told him Abensur that they hunt for food, for sport, and, on occasion, in self-defense. Whatever their reasons, the portraits are unsettling. But Abensur says he has no opinion on hunting, and he insists that he is not belittling his subjects---even if it is easy to laugh at the absurdity of a woman posing in a red gown alongside three dead cheetahs.
