Subjective trophies

Hunting trophies can be considered as visible signs of power, totemic adoration, exhumation of a repressed guilt or a significant matérialisation of a paradoxal love. The perceptible mimicry between the head of a shot animal and its hunter reminds the Nietzche’s theory of the uncounsious complicity between victims and executioners.

Far from a supposed unilatéral act, killing could be a tacit agreement between a predator and its prey, united in a natural cycle of perpetuation of the species. The African traditional hunters talk about mystic animal and esoteric rituals preceed and close the hunt. The trophy, as a false résurrection of a Dead animal used for ornementation, can be seen as an hommage to nature and divinity or like a human wish to substitute god.

Hunting is actually presented as a patrimonial héritage and went over primitive considération to become more creative. The beauty of the gest and the physionomy of the animal have replaced the nutritional aspect. Self reward, the trophy is free of all collective dimensions. Hors competition. Its value hides behind its story and its beauty shines, above all, in the eyes of the hunter.

The fundamental element of this approach holds in the perspective of contradictory notions on some technical or narrative plans.

Just as killing…with love.

Pierre Abensur