Thesis Proposal

Brooks Dierdorff

Thesis Proposal

Through the media of photography and video, I interpret the physical and psychological encounters between man and the natural world. Humans seek connection with nature and claim to be its guardians, while at the same time perpetuate its destruction. In my work I confront this contradiction in order to understand it. An interesting and complex relationship with nature exists between nature and hunting culture. Hunting can be the epitome of our oppositional relationship with nature, but it can also represent a communion with nature.  For example, in order to get close enough to an animal to kill it, hunters often imitate the sounds and smells of that animal.  The relationship of hunters to nature can range from killing only animals that they eat, to protecting land from encroachment so it is available for hunting purposes, to affirming their dominance by killing animals, and everything in between.  Hunting can express both an opposition to and an integration with nature all at the same time.

            My most recent work explores hunting culture. It is an attempt to understand the complexities of this specific relationship between humans and the natural world.  One of the first series of images I produced is titled Trophy.  The images in Trophy are appropriated images found on the Internet in which I erased the hunter from the traditional hunting trophy photograph.  I am interested in studying hunting trophy images because they collectively present a visual index of an American ideology that traces our cultural history.  Hunting trophy photographs comprise an archive of animal objectification and act as an affirmation of human dominance over the natural world. These images are trophies that are meant for others to see. The erasure of the hunter is intended to remove the focus from the hunter and place it on the animal, reversing the roles of importance within the image. The animal is left suspended between life and death, a state of being that only the photograph can provide. The absent space in the image once occupied by the hunter represents a set of invisible codes and assumptions whose power is always felt but never seen.  Trophy investigates these latent cultural codes and re-creates the narratives within the images.

            Following Trophy I produced a series of short videos in which I use a gun to interact with nature. These videos are a response to an article titled “The Connection” in the November, 2011 issue of Bow Hunting Magazine in which the author describes his experience killing a buck as a bonding experience with nature and with the animal that he killed.  In an attempt to understand this attitude toward nature, I tried to connect with nature in the same way. I find that the most interesting aspects of these videos is the way they are an interpretation of the way that hunters interact with nature.   Hunters care enough for nature to enter voluntarily into it, and study it, and be with it; but in the end, their purpose is that of destruction.  I follow the same pattern in these videos.  I spend time with nature, study it, and appreciate it; but in the end, I metaphorically destroy it for the purpose of making an art piece I can show to others. In other videos I take materials used in hunting out of their original context.  In my video titled, “Salt Lick,” a salt lick is positioned in a photography studio. I proceed to lick the salt block, placing myself in the position normally occupied by the animal that the hunter desires to kill.  Desire is a significant concept in this video piece as the video carries with it sexual undertones. 

In another video, “Deflate,” I re-purpose a plastic inflatable deer head and bring it into the deer’s natural habitat.  With only my arms visible to the camera, I proceed to deflate the deer head until all the air has been expended.  In this video I enact a physical event that is the death of this artificial deer’s life.  I push all the air from its head until its breath, which was originally mine, slowly diminishes and finally ceases. 

            In a recent series of photographs titled Apparati, I scanned the tips of bullets and guns that are typically used for hunting. Placed against a large background of black space, these objects are at first ambiguous and then threatening as the bullets and gun barrels are directed at the viewer standing in front of the image.  The bullets and gun barrels are also increased in scale in order to reduce the relative size of the viewer.

These images put the viewer in the place of the victim the instant before death. These apparatuses of death have no point of origin and no context – the only known is that the destination is the viewer.  In relationship to hunting these images refer to the moment of, or right before, the animal’s death.  Discussions as to whether hunting is right or wrong, if baiting the animal is unfair, etc., do not matter. The photographs in Apparati simply register the cold finality of death. 

As a subtext to my work I feel it is important to maintain a critical awareness of the medium I use to represent these complex relations between man and the natural world.  Now is the only time in human history that more people have lived in urban environments rather than rural.  Most people today therefore experience nature through the mediated sources of photography and video.  I feel it important to recognize the role of photography and video in contemporary society and how they are used to represent hunting, the natural world, and human interactions with it. 

            Over the next year I will produce work which further investigates the complexities of the hunter’s relationship to nature.  The end of summer marks the beginning of hunting season in Oregon. During this time I intend to experience hunting personally.  I believe that I must become a hunter in order to better understand what it is to be a hunter. I intend to document my hunting experience through video and photography.  The final work in the thesis show may be made of this documentation or it may be of my own interpretations of my experiences as a hunter. Many of my notions of hunting come from my limited experiences hunting with family members as an adolescent.  I wonder if my perspective will change and if my feelings about hunting will be altered when I return to it twelve years later. I wonder if I will be excited to kill an animal, and I also wonder if I will feel remorse when I do. I anticipate much work will be generated from these experiences.

            I see the work in the thesis show incorporating both photography and video. I intended to produce photographs and videos and to make use of appropriated objects found while researching and exploring this topic.