The Trophy, Animals & Photography

Earlier I wrote a blog entry titled “It was cold shooting animals!” I liked telling people that I was going to go shoot animals because of the double meaning. It felt okay to say it because I was not killing any animal. Then reading Mathew Brower’s book “Developing Animals: Wildlife and Early American Photography,” made me realize how we often use words without knowing the history of it. Who knew that the word shooting in photography does actually have a relation to hunting and the gun? And the word shooting is not the only one, also the words capturing, point and shoot and snap are a few others that filtered from the hunting vocabulary into photography. In the turn of the 20th century, the sport of photographing animals in the wild was trying to be equivalent to the hunting sport because it required the same set of skills: understanding how to track the animal without the animal seeing you. Some of the hunters both saw the photograph and the animal body as a trophy. What makes me question the usage of the word shooting today in relation to animals is that trophy/hunting relation.

The other day we went on a hike at the Fontenelle Forest in Omaha, Nebraska. My friend who works there was our tour guide. Before going to the hike we stopped at my friend's office who happen to be getting ready for the Ice Age exhibition that opens this July. In the office she had a stool made out of an elephant foot. It belonged to a tourist that bought it while in an African vacation, but it was confiscated at the US airport by customs. The Fontenelle Nature Association borrowed it from the Omaha zoo to educate people on conservation during the Ice Age exhibit.

The skin on the elephant's foot was rough with some hairs left on it. The top was cushioned with something. It was difficult to imagine a once live elephant while looking at this stool. It was a lot easier to look at it as a trophy or souvenir from this person's trip. However, it did sadden me to think an elephant died because someone wanted to own a piece of it. I hope people who encounter this elephant foot during the Ice Age exhibition will also feel empathy for this once live elephant.


Copyright © 2011 Diana M. Sanchez. All Rights Reserved.

Virtual Art Gallery: Animals, People – a shared environment

Animals, People – a shared environment is a conference about the human/animal relationship happening this summer in Australia. The Keynote speaker, Nigel Rothfels, is from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They had a call-for-works to all artist that work with the topic of humans/animal relationship. I'm very excited to be participating! To look at the photo I submitted click here.

Marks and Reflections

I became interested in Ana Mendieta’s work after taking a closer look at her Siluetas series. For Siluetas, Mendieta would physically embed her body in nature to leave behind a trace or mark on earth. These performances are experienced through photography and video documentation. In the photograph or video, we get to see either an image of Mendieta herself submerged in nature to become part of it or we see the absence of her body, but a trace or mark on the earth is left behind. Mendieta sees this performance with the earth, as a way to connect with Cuban Santeria beliefs, including the idea that the earth is a “living thing” from which one can derive personal power.1

Mendieta’s body and the earth become one another. Her body marks nature to fill the void she might have felt from the loss of part of her self-identity she may have suffered when she left Cuba. The trace or mark left on earth symbolizes this void, but more so for the wanting or her desire to be something else. I think Mendieta’s specific personal meaning is difficult to read. However, I see her performance with her body and earth as a becoming-earth. The deep connection to the earth and the becoming-earth approach is the main reason I find myself attracted to her work.

This becoming-earth makes me think of our human need to leave a mark behind on earth to prove our own existence. Her usage of earth as a material also brings to mind the ancient tradition of marking. Throughout history people have looked at marks found on caves or rocks to understand long-lost cultures. For example, the ancient Colombian civilization of San Agustin, did not consider the human on top of the natural hierarchy. The San Agustin people believed some of the animals were above humans and others below.

I definitely need to do more research on this topic, but I find this viewpoint fascinating. While I do not intend to my work to communicate a need for humans to return to ancient ways of thinking, I would like to examine the ancient views of humans’ relationships with animals and the way this was conveyed in their art and long history of mark making.


For now, these two photographs above are photographic sketches because they are an exploration of these new ideas. This came about from a combination of the many readings done in class and my study of Mendieta’s Siluetas. There are many technical aspects that I will need to work on, but I enjoy the idea of the animal being on the mirror and the mark left behind by the animal on the earth.




1. Jones, Amelia (2003) Selection from Body Art/Performing the Subject in Art of the Twentieth Century: A Reader.

Copyright © 2011 Diana M. Sanchez. All Rights Reserved.