Tales From The Dark Continent Part 3: International A$$

Disclaimer

In 2005 I was commissioned to photograph a big game hunt in South Africa. These are are my stories.

International A$$

South Africa is the queen mother of all brothels.

When you talk to a man with soft hands who claims to have killed an elephant, you have to wonder what reason a man with soft hands has for doing such a thing. Unlike Heart Disease and Type 2 Diabetes, elephants are not high on the 1st world list of threats to humanity.

My job was to portray the gentlemanly sport of big game hunting as genteel and aristocratic, which is not at all what it really is. What it is, is paying for flattery. I mean how else does a man with soft hands end up with an elephant head on his wall?

My employer wanted me to make him look important and distinguished. He wanted to make sure the world knew of his international exploits, so long as they met the first two criteria. My photographs of him have been published in prestigious hunting magazines that are read by tricks everywhere. I guess that makes me famous.

I did my job perfectly. He knew I would and this is why I got the gig, but I wasn’t happy.
​
My employer, who usually looked to me for council, had become deaf in both ears and was making an international ass of himself. An adolescent boy with a rifle; spending big money to kill big animals, running his mouth like a fool and fondling his mistress who was a carbon copy of his wife. I would have let all this slide, had he been nice to me, but seeing as how that was evidently not part of the plan I decided to show him what big game hunting looked like to me.

I shot his photos, the ones he wanted, and then I shot my photos, the ones I wanted him to see. For every one magazine ready portrait, I shot hundreds of gruesome images: tongues lolling from bleeding mouths, heads with lifeless eyes hanging from the back of flat bed trailers, pools of blood in the sand, ripped skin.

Click here to read the other Tales From The Dark Continent