Essays by Daniel Naudé and Martin Barnes
Prestel Munich • London • New York
All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog. F ra n z K a fk a
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. G e org e O rwe l l
If it is indeed impossible – or at least very difficult – to inhabit the consciousness of an animal, then in writing about animals there is a temptation to project upon them feelings and thoughts that may belong only to our own human mind and heart. JM C oe tz e e
Progression from a First Encounter Daniel NaudĂŠ
This book began on a road trip from Cape Town to Mozambique when, in the desert plains of the Karoo, I saw a feral Africanis dog. I stopped the car and, for a split second, the dog stared back at me. Then it lurked away with its mouth foaming, reminding me of a character from the tales of JRR Tolkien. It was a case of fiction meeting reality and freedom denying captivity. That first powerful moment of eye contact left me speechless and full of emotion. My eyes followed the animal as it trotted off towards the horizon, leaving me behind as the outsider. Confronted by this expression of rebellion, I was struck by how the dog, barely in control but guided by nature, has been a vehicle for mankind’s domination. The naturally crossbred Africanis, its ancestors depicted in the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians, seemed to reflect our culture and identity in the complex South African landscape in a peculiar way. I started taking a series of photographs of these dogs. Each portrait offered me a similarly ecstatic encounter, and my goal was to achieve that intense presence and experience of the first dog throughout the series. This led to many road trips, running after dogs in the veld while discovering how best to portray them. In the process, I was continuously surprised by nature, light, life in the veld, and the landscape itself. My time was not my own but was dictated by the circumstances of my surroundings. I was determined to get the shot regardless, and it often took two to three hours of walking and approaching the animals and framing the image. I ended up sleeping in my car, at police stations, or accepting the kindness of strangers who invited me into their homes. After completing the initial Africanis project, I wanted to rephotograph the same dogs again. I set about tracing them in different parts of South Africa, and slowly discovered that many of them were dead. A friend in Barkly East in the Eastern Cape told me he had found one of the dogs lying by the side of the road, killed by a car. In Strydenburg in the Northern Cape, after many conversations and showing people small prints of specific dogs, it emerged that they
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had been found dead in the veld, assumed to have died of ‘katte griep’, or canine parvovirus. I could not imagine the proud dogs that I had photographed, standing like statues in the landscape, now lying dead. I was influenced enormously in my approach by the British artist-explorer Samuel Daniell (1775-1811). In 1801 he set out on a journey from Cape Town to Leetakoe (today Dithakong in the North West Province) to document the landscape, people and animals. This resulted in the famous folio, African Scenery and Animals, published in 1804-5. I followed his route and read the accounts and notes his companions wrote on the way. They were attacked by buffalos and hippos; my encounters with animals were much tamer. Although I photographed some landscapes en route, my eye was focused on feral and domestic animals. I was interested in how people lived with domesticated and livestock animals, and the way that the histories of people and animals overlapped in the landscape. My way of working turned to an exploration of episodes in South African history that involved domestic animals. Conversations with people during my road trips brought to my attention a wealth of stories and information about how animals can represent and be symbolic of a culture. The Afrikaner bull was effectively the ‘engine’ that drove the Great Trek, and when I saw the Boer farmer, Ben Fyfer, seated in his study with the taxidermied head of a traditional Nguni bull above him (page 46), history seemed to collapse into the present. It was the epic tale of the Xhosa cattle killings of 1856 that led me to photograph the Xhosa people’s cattle on the seashores of the Eastern Cape. Nongqawuse’s prophecy – that they should kill all their cattle and destroy all their crops, and then the white settlers would be driven into the sea and the ancestors would bring them healthy animals – echoed in my mind when I saw these cattle chewing their cud on the shores. I learned that Nguni cattle are known for their unique skin patterns, which are identical on both sides of an animal. One cannot observe the mirrored pattern when the animal is alive; it only becomes evident once the skin has been tanned. When I had the rare opportunity of photographing a pair of identical twin Nguni calves (page 48), it was as if I had found, paradoxically, a duplicate of something individual and unique. I was also drawn to photograph sheep such as the Merino, an iconic animal of the Karoo, as well as Persian sheep and the cross-bred Nguni-Persian. These animals came into being through human intervention, reflecting the cultural, political and economic circumstances that defined their origin. We tend to forget this when we look at these strangely biblical animals. Farmers understand the relationship of predators and prey as a continuous cycle. In lambing season, farmers wake each morning wondering if thieves or other night predators have killed any of their livestock. The lambs must survive to an age when they will be slaughtered as food for man, the ultimate predator. The farmer protects and nurtures his livestock against the
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event of a natural cycle epitomised by the hunt, only to slaughter them, ensuring an income and thereby his own survival. This paradox is illustrated in the photograph of a taxidermied caracal eating a lamb belonging to Fransie van der Merwe, on the Waterkrans farm near Richmond (page 66). It became clear to me that the roles of predator and prey, as personified by the animals in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, are not as clearly defined as we would like to think. Like humans, Orwell’s animals adapt the rules to suit the needs of the dominant voice. Eventually, they disobey their most important rule – ‘No animal shall kill another animal’ – and human and animal become equally corrupt. I started seeing domesticated animals in ways I never anticipated. A pivotal photograph in this regard is David Tieties with his three-day-old donkey (page 38). I first saw David riding on his donkey cart pulled by two donkeys. Next to him was a cage with three puppies and running underneath in the shade of the cart was a dog tied to a rope. Beside him was also a green straw bag with the snow-white head of a baby donkey sticking out. It was an extraordinary sight. I stopped and asked if I could take a portrait of him standing in the landscape with his baby donkey, and he immediately nodded his head and said yes. When he climbed down from the donkey cart, I saw that he was only about 1.4 metres in height. We walked a short distance from the donkey cart into the landscape where I took his portrait. The way David holds the foal reminds one of the control that humans have over animals. The position of David’s head above the horizon makes him look powerful and proud. Yet, there is an irony in that his newborn foal will, in a few months’ time, carry him around in the barren land of the Karoo, where people rely on these animals for transport as well as companionship. It is also ironic that David knows the exact age of both the donkeys that pull his cart, but does not know his own date of birth or age. While taking the photograph, I was overwhelmed by the tenderness of the connection between David and his three-day-old donkey. Man, animal and landscape are one in this image. My encounters with animals, and the resulting photographs, reflect the mutual surprise, wonder and fascination that both man and animal seem to experience in confronting each other. Is the animal following my script, in a performance of my making, or its own? Is there a script at all? Each animal’s pose or ‘performance’ went beyond any preconceived ideas I may have had, and in reality these encounters were far more compelling than can be conveyed. Each captured moment is a glimpse of a ‘meeting point’ between the animal and myself in the natural realm, experiences that fuelled me during the working process. I do not know what animals think – they are as silent as my photographs. Yet, I recognise my own being in theirs. Nothing I have read about animals can sufficiently account for the intensity I experienced in these encounters. For me, the presence of an animal remains unfathomable, unexplained, yet incredibly potent: perhaps a threat – the presence of a predator; perhaps that of a protector.
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Meeting Points Martin Barnes
Up to the age of around five or six, there is a certain way that a child can fall silent and begin to stare. Absorbed in, and fascinated by, whatever is the focus of attention, the child is trying to fathom what has caught his or her eye. Perhaps the subject of that gaze is something encountered for the very first time. In that lingering look, we can sense the attempt to understand the unfamiliar through observation. At the same time, there is also a desire simply to experience the joy of looking. If that sense is not dulled over time and with increased familiarity when we become adults, aware of a wider social context, this intensity of looking – especially at another person – might be considered rude, or perhaps even offensive. And when applied specifically to one race or sex observing the other to assert or subvert a power relation, it has, with descriptive precision, been called ‘reckless eyeballing’. In reckless behaviour, a flagrant desire knowingly outstrips its potential dangers. There is a threatening and predatory thrill inherent in the very act of observation. However, we forgive this intensity of staring in children because we know that its intention is devoid of power play. The look appears to be one that precedes any manipulative or thrill-seeking thought. And it will ultimately locate its explanations outside of the boundaries of cognitive process or words. This pure encounter between the observer and the observed – without naming or judging – is the beginning of a lifelong exercise in visual intelligence. Aside from their self-evident descriptive value as a record or comment on a particular subject or place, Daniel Naudé’s photographs are a conscious part of that dialogue. Acting as the main vehicle for that exchange is Naudé’s central subject: the South African feral Africanis dog as a motif of wildness, resistance to domestication, breeding, instinct, genealogy and visceral energy. Yet that central subject has been expanded, augmented and framed by the inclusion of other and generally domesticated animals: lambs, sheep, bulls, cows, horses and donkeys feature strongly, and perform as equally powerful players. Naudé deliberately uses different photographic styles and registers (from the documentary ‘truth-proof’ image to the staged tableaux fantasy) to give his selection of images pace and variety. His work lends dignity, assertiveness, monumentality, stillness and drama to his subjects. There is little movement or blur in his photographs; and where there is, it becomes notable because of its rarity. Many of the photographs reference the formal
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qualities of the animal portrait paintings, famed for their anatomical accuracy, made in the 18th and 19th centuries by English painters George Stubbs (1724-1806) and Edwin Henry Landseer (1802-1873). Such paintings helped confer status on their commissioners, landed gentry who were proud owners of prize animals. Naudé draws upon this pictorial history and conventions of animal depiction, transposing it to a contemporary moment and another continent. Simultaneously, he retains and questions its implications of colonial control. In addition, with a pictorial history weighted by anthropological and ethnographic classification, modern-day South Africa is a highly charged place as a subject. Within this context, Naudé’s work takes its place in the country among a recent surge of figurative photography that wrestles with, and yet finds creative inspiration from, its legacy.1 Aside from such historical, political and social imperatives and intersections, philosophical inquiry around the nature of photography has made much of the lingering and seemingly indiscriminate eye of the camera: its curious capacity to blend an unforgiving stare with an even-handed lack of judgment. Interceding between the observer and the observed, the camera apparatus seems to assert its own viewpoint, balanced uncertainly and partway between all-seeing scrutiny and Zen-like compassionate remove. (The camera, of course, is not neutral, and even its positioning to include or exclude something from within the frame implies the photographer’s intelligence and sensibility.) In recent years, the term ‘deadpan’ has been used as a catchall to describe the embrace of this trope by some photographers and the resulting aesthetic of sharply focussed, detailed, often large-scale prints that coolly frame their everyday or unsmiling subjects with an air of sophisticated detachment. It is a kind of anti-style, avoiding sentiment, which has itself become a stylistic choice. Naudé’s images utilise this tradition, which they seem to operate both within and against. The structure, rather than the content, of the majority of his images is detailed, and he appears to stare evenly and openly at what they depict. However, his subjects – at least to an audience unfamiliar with the African landscapes, animals and peoples – may appear exotic, romantic, wild, spectacular or even sentimental. In the hinterland between style and subject, as viewers, we are left to question the authorial intention that lies behind the lens: reckless eyeballing or childlike awe? In his own account of the origins of this body of work, Naudé cites as inspiration his unnerving yet revelatory encounter in the desert with the intense stare levelled at him by a feral Africanis dog. This eye contact between human and animal is replicated in many of the photographs. Who is it that gains uppermost control in this exchange of gazes? Certainly, there is mutual curiosity, sometimes surprise, maybe a vying for position. There are surely as many questions as answers on each side of such an encounter. If there is a script to what appear sometimes like stage-managed images, whose is it? Naudé’s skill lies in balancing the controlled outline of a visual script with elements of chance. Each photograph is a shared moment in time, one in which the animal and the human seem at once named and yet nameless, specific and yet universal. There is a mutual ‘now-ness’ to this collection of arresting human-animal gazes, mediated by the camera. In total, they read like a remarkable series of ecstatic, intensified meeting points in which we query what it means to be alive, locked in momentary register with another sentient being.
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Within the carefully planned sequence of images in this book, visual exchanges with humans appear at fewer intervals than with animals, but at defining nodal points. Just as the parade of animals gathers pace, we find the human presence asserted: workers or owners emerge, coexisting within, rather than entirely dominating, the taxonomy of an animal kingdom. At times, the pictures record the human desire to classify and control the animal realm. (It is apt, in this context in particular, that the term ‘shooting’ is applied both to hunting and to photographing.) Look at the telling pictures of taxidermy arrangements or at the cabinet of gathered skulls. Do the humans truly assert a position of dominance over the animal world? Perhaps the powerful image of Ben Fyfer – the Boer farmer seated in his office, staring out at us beneath the parallel gaze of the trophy bull’s head on his wall – suggests they might (page 46). Or are the humans just as much subject to time and nature, and thus ultimately on the same level of coexistence and interdependence as all creatures? The picture of David Tieties with his three-day-old donkey (page 38) offers this counter-argument. On a formal level, this image is an essay in complementary contrasts of browns and whites both in the human and animal subjects – the man’s skin and clothing and the animal’s hair – and in the landscape beyond, which metaphorically implies an interconnected whole. This classification and sequential presentation of the human weighed against the animal is staged predominantly against the sweep of a landscape backdrop: vistas of scrub and farmland bleached in sunlight, or a coastline, tumbling with clouds. Often, the animals seem to have been born from and fashioned out of the same stuff as the land: the curves of the dogs’ bellies and backs, when silhouetted against the sky, echo the undulating dips and rises of distant hills; on closer inspection, the striped pelt of a dog emerges from lying camouflaged within the grass; and the mottled or piebald hide of a bull or horse repeats the watercolour blotches of cumulus clouds. There seems to be an ancient connection with the cycle of time and elemental origins implied in the way Naudé sees animals coupled with landscape. A hint of the pattern of the ribs of a dog is traceable in the furrows of a ploughed field. Some of the subjects of Naudé’s photographs look like fossils in waiting. And indeed some are already carcasses blending into the land. There is also a biblical cadence about the images. Tacit references to Christian symbolism abound. The bulls at the beach seem as if recently disembarked from Noah’s Ark. Is that a kind of sacrificial lamb held on the lap of a woman who could also be an archetype standing in for Mother Mary? Suddenly, the donkeys and scapegoats look ready to play their part in a religious narrative. Most tellingly, the rainbow that arches over the landscape in the central pages of this book ties together the strands of the human, animal and mineral with an intangible but incandescent promise. Who, or what, acts as a witness to this sense of awe and promise of interconnectedness? Through the repetition of their depiction, Naudé’s photographs imply that it is the dogs that fulfil this role. Shot often from a low viewpoint, the animals appear poised and commanding, surveying the land, and attentive to something – we do not know what – far outside the borders of the frame. The quote from Kafka, chosen by Naudé to preface this book, begins to make sense and ring true: ‘All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog’. Here, the dog transcends its position on the variable axis between domesticated comforter and wild predator. While often acting as
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man’s companion, the dog seems also to carry for us an instinctive understanding across generations that cannot be transmitted between humans alone. It is verbally mute; but precisely because of its lack of language, it is imbued with an unspeakable knowledge. That knowledge is found in the meeting points and courage of those who gaze in order to understand, and in the inexplicable intelligence of images that goes beyond words. Seen in this metaphysical way, Naudé’s dogs become sentinels: watching over and drawing our attention to something ever-present, yet which lies just out of the reach of human understanding.
Martin Barnes is Senior Curator, Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
1 For an in-depth examination of recent figurative photography in South Africa see Tamar Garb, Figures and Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography, Steidl/V&A Publications, 2011.
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Outside Underberg. KwaZulu-Natal, 29 October 2009
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Outside Bergville. KwaZulu-Natal, 27 October 2009
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On the Van Heerdens’ farm. Murraysburg district, Western Cape, 3 February 2009
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Untitled. Richmond district, Northern Cape, 25 January 2009
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Untitled. Vredesvallei, Riemvasmaak district, Northern Cape, 24 June 2009
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Pack of dogs hunting. Richmond, Northern Cape, 25 January 2009
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Untitled. Richmond district, Northern Cape, 25 January 2009
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Africanis 2. Strydenburg, Northern Cape, 1 April 2008
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Africanis 15. Strydenburg, Northern Cape, 28 March 2008
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Africanis 14. Philippolis, Free State, 12 August 2009
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Sheep grazing on Annandale potato farm. Barkly East, Eastern Cape, 22 July 2010
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Africanis 8. Barkly East, Eastern Cape, 5 July 2008
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David Tieties with his three-day-old donkey. Verneukpan, Northern Cape, 6 April 2009
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Africanis 11. Murraysburg, Western Cape, 4 February 2009
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Ralles with his pack of hunting dogs. Waterkrans farm, Richmond, Northern Cape, 12 May 2010
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Croc Nelani feeding a lamb on Annandale farm. Barkly East, Eastern Cape, 25 July 2010
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Ben Fyfer, an Nguni cattle farmer, at his desk. Louwna, North West Province, 2 March 2010
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Twin Nguni calves. Stella, North West Province, 2 March 2010
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Black and white Nguni bull. Stella, North West Province, 1 March 2010
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Rainbow near Perdepoort. Outside Willowmore, Eastern Cape, 7 March 2010
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Africanis 12. Richmond, Northern Cape, 4 April 2009
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Africanis 17. Danielskuil, Northern Cape, 25 February 2010
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Dead Nguni beside the road outside Umtata. Eastern Cape, 19 October 2009
Dead Nguni beside the road outside Umtata. Eastern Cape, 21 October 2009
Backyard of the Kenhardt Hotel. Kenhardt, Northern Cape, 7 April 2009
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Niel Fyfer in his back garden with his tame meerkat. Louwna, North West Province, 2 March 2010
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Toppie Steenberg's homing pigeons. Strydenburg, Northern Cape, 21 June 2011
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Trophy taxidermied by Fransie van der Merwe, a sheep farmer. Waterkrans farm, Richmond, Northern Cape, 12 May 2010
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Mario Jacobs with an African clawless otter. Quaggasfontein farm, Graaff-Reinet district, Eastern Cape, 14 May 2010
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Flip Looch's collection cabinet. Quaggasfontein farm, Graaff-Reinet, Eastern Cape, 17 June 2009
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Niklaas Ockers, an ostrich jockey. Oudtshoorn, Western Cape, 28 July 2011
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Young cow with branch collar. Woodford, KwaZulu-Natal, 25 October 2009
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Nguni bull. Kei River, Eastern Cape, 19 October 2009
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Nguni cow with suckling calf. Kei River Mouth, Eastern Cape, 19 October 2009
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Rainbow. Hanover, Northern Cape, 2 November 2009
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Quagga. Elsenburg, Stellenbosch, Western Cape, 30 August 2010
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Storm approaching Aberdeen. Eastern Cape, 3 March 2010
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Donkey. Mlungwana, Eastern Cape, 20 October 2009
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White mule. Mlungwana, Eastern Cape, 20 October 2009
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Appaloosa horse in foal. Curry's Post, KwaZulu-Natal, 23 October 2009
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Poenskop. Eastern Cape, 20 May 2010
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Africanis 21. Richmond, Northern Cape, 17 April 2011
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Africanis 23. Richmond, Northern Cape, 28 January 2009
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Farm between Aberdeen and Willowmore. Eastern Cape, 7 March 2010
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Xhosa cattle on the shore. Mgazi, Eastern Cape, 19 May 2010
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Xhosa ox on the shore. Mgazi, Eastern Cape 19 May 2010
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Xhosa cow on the shore. Mgazi, Eastern Cape, 19 May 2010
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Xhosa bull on the shore. Mgazi, Eastern Cape, 18 May 2010
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Karoo aloe. Nieu-Bethesda district, Eastern Cape, 15 May 2010
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Klipspringer. Graaff-Reinet Taxidermy, Eastern Cape, 20 May 2011
Duiker. Graaff-Reinet Taxidermy, Eastern Cape, 20 May 2011
Africanis 19. Graaff-Reinet, Eastern Cape, 15 May 2010
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Africanis 24. Graaff-Reinet, Eastern Cape, 30 May 2011
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Africanis 20. Petrusville, Northern Cape, 19 April 2011
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Africanis 18. Murraysburg, Western Cape, 10 May 2010
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Between Aberdeen and Beaufort West. Western Cape, 1 April 2009
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Nguni goat facing to the right. Erasmuskloof, Eastern Cape, 17 October 2009
Nguni goat facing to the left. Erasmuskloof, Eastern Cape, 17 October 2009
M么reson farm. Steynsburg, Eastern Cape, 18 July 2009
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Msikoli Nelani the morning after hunting. Barkly East, Eastern Cape, 27 July 2010
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Cow struggling to give birth. The calf died after three days, and the cow was shot after this photograph was taken. Richmond, Northern Cape, 9 May 2010
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Slaughterhouse on Quaggasfontein farm. Graaff-Reinet, Eastern Cape, 15 May 2010
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Mohapi Kotelo. Philippolis, Free State, 12 August 2009
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Merino sheep. Graaff-Reinet, Eastern Cape, 15 May 2010
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Persian sheep. Willowmore, Eastern Cape, 24 May 2010
Nguni-Persian sheep. Willowmore, Eastern Cape, 24 May 2010
Regina Nelani. Barkly East, Eastern Cape, 27 July 2010
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Outside Umtata. Eastern Cape, 21 October 2009
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Farm. Mdumbi, Eastern Cape, 21 October 2009
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Sneeuberg Pass. Sneeuberg, Murraysburg district, 2 February 2009
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Acknowledgments I would like to thank my wife and parents for their belief in me and their ongoing support. Thanks to Michael Stevenson for his guidance from the very first dog portrait onwards. Many thanks also to the following people for their assistance: Pieter Hugo, Federica Angelucci, Tony Meintjes, Andrew da Conceicao, Joost Bosland, Sophie Perryer, David Brodie, RaphaĂŤlle Jehan, Jessica Smuts, Elizabeth Gunter, David Goldblatt, Francois and Sanneke van der Merwe, Ray du Toit, Vincent van Graan, Martin Barnes, Curt Holtz and Gabrielle Guy.
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© Prestel Verlag, Munich • London • New York 2012 © for images Daniel Naudé 2012 © for texts the authors 2012 Front cover Africanis 12. Richmond, Northern Cape, 4 April 2009 Prestel Verlag, Munich A member of Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH Prestel Verlag Neumarkter Strasse 28 81673 Munich Tel. +49 (0)89 4136-0 Fax +49 (0)89 4136-2335 Prestel Publishing Ltd. 4 Bloomsbury Place London WC1A 2QA Tel. +44 (0)20 7323-5004 Fax +44 (0)20 7636-8004 Prestel Publishing 900 Broadway, Suite 603 New York, NY 10003 Tel. +1 (212) 995-2720 Fax +1 (212) 995-2733 www.prestel.com Library of Congress Control Number is available; British Library Cataloguingin-Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library; Deutsche Nationalbibliothek holds a record of this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographical data can be found under: http://dnb.d-nb.de Prestel books are available worldwide. Please contact your nearest bookseller or one of the above addresses for information concerning your local distributor. Text editor Sophie Perryer Design and layout Gabrielle Guy, Cape Town Production at Prestel Nele Krüger Origination Meintjes Digital, Cape Town Printing and binding Firmengruppe Appl, Sellier Druck, Freising
Verlagsgruppe Random House FSC-DEU-0100 The FSC ®-certified paper Galaxi Keramik has been supplied by Papier Union, Germany. ISBN 978-3-7913-4724-0