Pornographic Gaze Question & The Chimera Series

In Zoos and Eyes: Contesting Captivity and Seeking Successor Practices, Ralph Acampora argues that zoos are pornographic because they provide similar settings as pornography. Acampora writes “We find in both cases fetishes of the exotic, underlying fear of nature, fantasies of illicit or impossible encounter, and a powerful presumption of mastery and control (Griffin, 1982).” For Acampora the zoo visitor is not motivated by sexual attraction as is pornography, but rather he analysis the similarity in the structure of power in both zoos and pornography.

Acampora writes that looking at captive animals in zoos is about a desire to see animals in the frame of “wildness.” To want to see an animal as being wild, in a captive situation, is to look at it as a version of what “wild” means. Wild animals decide if they want to be seen or not by people. While zoos provide an encounter with “wild” animals any day of the week. The overexposure of animal bodies in zoos against their will is what Acampora refers to a pornographic gaze. A camera can extend a pornographic gaze as it records the human encounters with animals. The photographic image may frame animals as “wild,” and a feeling of power over animals may result in a photograph becoming trophy-like.

The ghost-like body of a lion and exhibit space behind him becomes one another in Untitled #17, (from the Chimera Series). The pornographic gaze is rupture by not positioning the lion as an object of desire, but rather as just being there and as almost not even being present. The viewer of the photograph may desire to see the lion’s body, but the camera’s optical illusion of the ghost-like body does not allow for such reading. The Chimera photographs speak of the pornographic gaze. However, each Chimera photograph has a detail left in the frame such as reflections, painted backgrounds, fire sprinklers, blur or ghost-like bodies and so on, to break the “wild” reading.

Copyright © 2012 Diana M. Sanchez. All Rights Reserved. [Untitled #17, (from the Chimera Series)]