I am not sure how I stumbled upon this picture on the net....but it has haunted me for the last two days.
The picture is absolutely perfect....the light....the halo effect around the girl's head....the quiet startle effect.....the young in between adult and child huntress....South Africa....the gut reaction to a dead animal on a live animal.
The Visual Blog gives background on the picture:
"This year’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery has been awarded to David Chancellor’s photograph Huntress with Buck. In the photograph we can see a young woman sitting on a horse looking down into the camera. The photograph appears to be slightly manipulated, as the area near the head of the main subject seems to be brightened to increase her aura. The low vantage point of the camera and the elevated position of the huntress have the effect that she looks grand and statuesque. In his photograph, Chancellor evokes the iconography of equestrian statues depicting knights, gods and military leaders. The central relationship is not between the huntress and her horse, but between the huntress and the buck lying dead across the horse’s back. The symbolism here is pretty clear: the horse is alive, the buck is dead, their bodies crossing each other where the huntress is sitting. The huntress is portrayed as killer as much as a nurturer.
In a sense, the huntress is at a crossroad herself: she is neither girl nor woman. Without the caption provided, the androgynous looks of the subject also fail to indicate a clear gender identity. It is perhaps an ungendered performance that is possible in the ‘wild’ settings the photograph was taken in. This notion of inbetweeness is further emphasized by the lighting: photographed when the sun was kissing the horizon, it is neither day, nor is it night. The low sunlight has the effect that all elements in the photograph come visually together as, for a brief moment, everything is steeped in a deep red colour."
Although the photograph was taken in South Africa, the girl is American from Alabama and ironically her last name is Slaughter. There's been much chatter on the web about rich girls keeping up the hunting traditions of royalty and the moral consequences of trophy hunting.One article mentioned an interesting aspect of the picture.....neither animal....dead or alive looks at the camera....it is only the human being, who is capable of making moral decisions, who looks us into the eye and asks us....perhaps defies us to have an opinion.
Amazing.
