On a hippotamus

The photograph “Siedler / Soldat steht in Siegerpose auf erlegtem Flusspferd“ was taken by Walther Dobbertin in the period from 1906-14. It’s black and white and was shot in upright format.

It takes just one moment: shooting. Be it with a gun or with a camera. Everything that leads up to this moment is hidden behind the photograph. We don’t get to see what was done before or after. We can just witness this very moment. The hunter posing with the dead animal just pulled the trigger on the rifle and the photographer (who himself is hidden as opposed to the hunter) just shot a picture. The result in both cases is a trophy. A dead animal who gets consumed and its skull hung upon a wall, its ivory sold, and the photograph which gets shown as the ultimate proof when the carcass and the hunter/photographer will be long gone. How long does the triumph over nature last?

In contrast to other hunting photographs the dead hippopotamus still seems alive as it is captured in its natural habitat (as opposed to lying flat on the ground in most photographs). It must have been quite an effort to create this shot. In most cases the European hunters are sitting on bigger animals and kneeling besides smaller ones, or they put one foot upon the dead bodies. In this case the hunter is shown standing upright on the dead animal. This seems kind of peculiar.
Africa during the colonial times was seen as a place where nature was untouched by man, as still being primeval. Europeans were in search of untouched places where they could flee from the tight corset of rules of society. Hunting big game was seen as a romantic act that could not be reproduced in Europe and had to be done exclusively in Africa. Stalking and shooting (both hunters and photographers) animals that couldn’t be found in Europe was seen as something truly manly. Women also participated in this “sport”.

The hippopotamus is one of the biggest mammals in Africa, it usually weighs about a ton and is rather aggressive. A single man being able to kill such a huge animal with a rifle shows which power he has in changing the untouched nature which he so badly wanted to experience. The technology of man has enabled him to overpower an animal which would easily be able to kill him. Technology has enabled man to stalk and easily shoot (both hunter and photographer) animals. The photograph can be seen as symbolic for the power relation between man and nature: Man stands upon nature through technology.