Urbanautica's founder Steve Bisson is invited by The Salt Yard Gallery in Hong Kong for a second curatorial collaboration. 

The Salt Yard, an independent art space, will exhibit David Chancellor’s “The Game Is Killing The Game”, a documentary series on hunting safaris that he photographed in South Africa over the years. Since the beginning of the 20th century, East African hunting safaris has became a fashionable pursuit among members of the privileged classes in Europe and the United States. It was also a source of revenue for the British colonial government and produces a group of professional hunters who especially served these privileged classes. Big-game hunting is still vibrant recently but it now exists in the form of the so-called game ranching that habitats of livestock farming are turned into venues for wild animals in captivity and places for tourists enjoying hunting. These ranches are now popular in South Africa and are authorized in many African countries. The documentary series of David Chancellor fully revealed the various perspectives of South African hunting safaris, including the hunter and the hunted as well as the displaying of stuffed animals as trophies. People hunted in order to fill their stomachs or make a living in the past but now they hunt for pleasure. Chancellor’s works call for a reflection of this ancient and uncivilized “sport” when animal right is a hot topic in the globe.

© The book 'Hunters' by David Chancellor, published by Schilt Publishing, 2013.

Steve Bisson writes about the exhibition: «Hunting has historically been a tremendous key to the understanding of the relationship between man and animal and, thus, how the human being has chosen to stay in the world.

The end of hunting as a form of survival has marked the transition from nomadic to sedentary. The consequences of this event are still being studied and undoubtedly affect the mind of the civilized man who pushed through progress in order to remain in motion and to satisfy a desperate need to escape from a constant reality. It is no coincidence if a lot of writings have sought through the description of hunting practices to document territories and their transformation. The prehistoric artistic findings, as the cave paintings, mostly staged animals or hunting scenes.

The exhibition of David Chancellor, in its first Asian exposure, is a tribute to long‐term research. The photography is mainly set in Africa, that more than any other continent, maintains an evocative power in the collective imagination. It is the homeland of the big animals not yet domesticated, the most sought after destination by any hunter. Africa is the place where it all started, it is the bridge to our past as much as to all the forgotten and most savage instincts. The rituals of hunting prompted the capacity of sharing, collaboration and the creation of tools among the first human communities. Chancellor then brings us into our past, what we were, but it also raises questions about what we have become. Inevitably leads us to think about our own Savana, the infinite city, and to how or what we eat. Hunting was the main occupation of the man who lived in small communities. Now the food comes to us from far away, from a not well specified where. And our communities have become agglomerations of millions of people many of whom will never meet.

Chancellor takes us to the backstage of hunting. «Today’s hunters are hedge fund managers, surgeons, dentists, attorneys, and their wives and children. They have the option to attend ‘safari’ training schools in their home countries, shooting remote-controlled Elephants, Leopards, and Lions. Most have a place for their trophies in their homes back in the US and Europe, long before they even arrive in Africa.» In the homes of hunters, among stuffed heads, skin rugs, rifles, and other hanging trophies, we find the ordinary man and the demonstration of a need for superiority which someway appears paradoxical. The fees they paid to hunt could actually contribute to the conservation of the animals that they actually hunted? The issue raises the eternal doubt over a possible equilibrium among the living species, humans included. As in the words of Chancellor «I’m deeply convinced by what I’ve seen that it is only by dialogue and understanding that a sustainable harmony between nature and mankind can be forged.»

Not all hunters are the same though. The huntresses are much calmer «often sitting with the animal for a long while after hunting it, therefore the resulting portraits are much more contemplative.» The author has spent a lot of time with the hunters and their families. «The way I work, it’s hugely time-consuming but I learned very quickly that you simply have to be there. The opportunities are brief and intense and it’s impossible to duplicate them later.» In this mixture of documentary and portraiture, we slowly begin to grasp the hugely complex relationship between animals that are both struggling to adapt to inexorable changing environments.

I knew the work by David Chancellor several years ago. I interviewed him long before his book came out. The phrases mentioned in this introduction are collected from that interview. When I was asked to curate an exhibition on this subject I had no hesitation.

© David Chancellor

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LINKS

Talk by David Pollock with David Chancellor
Talk by Sheung Yiu with Dustin Shum (The Salt Yard)
Talk by Steve Bisson with Dustin Shum (The Salt Yard)
The Salt Yard 
David Chancellor