I sometimes wonder how much room there is for careful debate and an effort to understand what happens around us – positions and outrage are usually quite fixed. Recently, I have been looking out for photographic work that attempts to complicate seemingly simplistic arguments or binary oppositions through approach and practice. This review is the second after my first, on Michael Sita’s History of Poland earlier the year. In my view, art offers potential as one of the few sites where open questioning is entertained (in most contexts) and can be critically examined. I am also aware that the audience for our left-leaning concerns are not necessarily as open-minded as we imagine, and perhaps even border on being conservative at times. Outrage when artists consider tricky terrain is commonplace, to the extent that they must manage their posture very carefully on volatile or taboo subjects for fear of cancellation or censorship. The point is that art should be a space for the experimentation of ideas and the posing of questions, and such hazards can only serve to narrow discourse and keep artists fearful, reluctant to stray too far from accepted and consensual agendas.
Such a dilemma must have been faced by Julia Mejnertsen when broaching the subject of her mother’s penchant for hunting large, wild animals. Growing up in an otherwise fairy regular environment in Copenhagen, Denmark, Mejnertsen became interested in questioning the apparent contradictions she discovered around hunting and the welfare of animals. All while contemplating the huge, big elephant in the room (sorry) that was the moral conflict between what society finds reprehensible and a mother who was not perceived as morally corrupt. This became a long-term photographic project where she was able to assess her own thoughts and feelings, given her proximity to the subject through her mother’s hobby and of course, the social faux pas that surrounded it. Having initially worked on some rudimentary elements, it was on attending a photographic workshop with Mathieu Asselin and Sergio Valenzuela-Escobedo in 2020 where the idea was developed further and subsequently, a book project was envisioned with visualisation assistance from Valenzuela-Escobedo and design by Ricardo Báez with publisher, Dalpine.
The project started for Mejnertsen with the realisation of how the subject is compounded by notions around which animals are acceptable for killing and consumption, and which are not. How animals are coded into human psychology as entertainment (i.e Disneyfication), pets and wildlife, and how only when it suits us, they are placed firmly outside of human exceptionalism – how they must serve our interests for the purposes of our survival – or how we might humanise them for our pleasure as surrogate children, or as pets – objects of care and devotion.
Beyond purposes of sustenance and survival, hunting was the sporting activity of kings and queens, the aristocracy, the wealthy and powerful. The colonial conquest of the world perpetuated big game hunting as a pastime for the coloniser. Another way of conquering far off lands, proving to the natives how with guns they were invincible and supreme above all things. Colonialism also paved the way to installing big game hunting and safaris as a sport or adventure experience for the ex-pat or privileged European traveller, and with this, a (now) illegal industry for poaching and the collection and sale of hunting trophies, taxidermy and products associated with the kill. Hunting firmly places belief on human exceptionalism and my feeling is that there is a connection between fulfilling a desire to kill alongside one which provides the hunter with a way of reinforcing a sense of control, power or extreme pleasure. The essay at the front of the book by Grégoire Loïs elaborates on this need to destroy while at the same time attributing the relationship to nature and wildlife as part of our anthropocentric condition. I think while this is true, it omits aspects of white supremacy and the colonial project which has instilled a set of supremacist values and sense of entitlement to Eurocentric ideology. Although animal rights are a relatively recent development, as is the growth of vegetarianism and veganism, much of this legacy remains, as is clear from the need to protect and police against hunting in parts of the world where endangered species are at risk of extinction.
Returning to the book, hopefully it is clear that hunting and a desire to do so has historical and psychological complexity that is worthy of consideration if there is an attempt to understand this phenomenon, regardless of how one feels about it. In what I have gleaned, Mejnertsen’s project seeks to fulfil two objectives. One is to understand the subject, not as a way of excusing her mother’s actions, but to present the reader with the same set of questions that she asked herself. The second, in my view, is to process this violence that covertly and quietly has disturbed life and a close personal relationship. The aesthetic regime is perhaps a space that can help with catharsis, traumatic feelings and the processing of what cannot be come to terms with. In the book, we are taken on a journey of sorts through chapters, where the author takes us from childhood interpretations and interactions with the elephant to animals in captivity in zoos, the architecture of captivity and the erasure of animals and pets through abstracted symbols and shapes representing their demise. Blood and hence, death too, is introduced through the book along with the entrance and juxtaposition of the mother and representations of care. This dichotomy sets up the conflict at the centre of Mejnertsen’s enquiry. The mother is both killer with gun, and mother of children, loving keeper of household pets, she sports a tattoo of a cartoon-like elephant on her inner wrist which is embossed onto the following page in the book as an imprinted index.
Shots run through the book as a set of hunting and prey images are shown with the same gunshot perforation piercing images of the mother and prey. A set of provocations are presented to the reader towards the end of the book, the same questions the author has asked herself at some point. Finally, a written exchange between mother and daughter provide insight into their relationship, before the indication of some form of transformation as daughter morphs into her mother. What is apparent and what the book makes really clear, by setting up this psychological space is the difficulty that comes with addressing this personal story. It is about the two central characters, the mother and the daughter and an attempt to reconcile something that is clearly understood as being morally wrong. Subject matter like this should absolutely be taken on and it is testament to Mejnertsen’s bravery in opening up her family’s story for public scrutiny. While no hard conclusions are revealed, I can only hope that through the process of creating this work, both mother and daughter may be on their way to some form of inner transformation and peace.