THE END OF THE DAYDREAM143of animal and plant surfaces through a process of synthetic purification.^20
Through the modern age taxidermy and photography furthered that spe-
cific epistemological project by producing a new absolute visibility of ani-
mals, and by simultaneously enabling the emergence of an unprecedented
cultural construction of nature. Absolute visibility relied on similar tech-
nical advantages in the visualization, immobilization, and preservation of
animal bodies. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the rela-
tionship between photographic discourses and practices and those of
natural history became further entangled. Taxidermy practically froze
animal life in photographically constructed tableaux situated inside the
natural history museum. But outside the walls of the museum taxidermy
was also used to technically compensate for the extremely long exposure
times typically required by early cameras and films. This condition endured
until the 1890s and forbade the possibility of visually capturing live ani-
mals.^21 Taxidermy objects therefore stood for live animals in the construc-
tion of tableaux that offered faked images of deep nature in which man’s
manipulation was present and yet concealed. Simultaneously, this practice
marked the beginning of a new photographic practice: camera hunting.^22
Camera hunting gained recognition at the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury as an activity requiring great skill, incorporating and simultaneously
exceeding the skills possessed by the hunter (fig. 4.1).^23 As argued by James
R. Ryan, author of Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of
the British Empire, because of the complex narrativizations a photograph
could effortlessly convey, the commemoration of the hunt became almost
more important than the trophy itself.^24
According to John Berger’s influential essay “Why Look at Animals?”
the physical marginalization of animals that characterized the rise to mo-
dernity produced more resilient cultural animal presences that rely on
the photographic image for their materialization.^25 Berger argued that
wildlife photography provided the opportunity for a construction of nature
as a value-concept, another form of realism—one opposed to the artificial
social structures denying man its “naturalness.”^26 Simultaneously, cam-
era hunting and wildlife photography functioned as romantic shorthand
for audiences who were increasingly repressed by capitalism and indus-
trialization. Thus, classically staged, “the image of a wild animal became the
starting point of a day-dream: a point from which the day-dreamer departs
with his back turned.”^27