Wildlife Requiem
Antelope & rifle.
Rural garage, Gardiner, Montana.
Bear skin.
Boy with elk parts.
Deer in car.
Hanging elk in bucket.
Hells Half Acre.
Wildlife Requiem: 1981-1984
In modern America, people rarely hunt wild animals in order to survive. And how often hunting is necessary to cull and preserve healthy wildlife populations is open to debate. In Wildlife Requiem, published in 1984, with an introduction from Cornell Capa, we see deer, elk, bear and antelope from their first encounters with hunters to their final resting places as trophies and icons. The beauty—color, light, and design—found in the harsh world of the hunter and the hunted creates a tension between the simultaneous existence of life and death, freedom and constraint, destruction and birth. These dualities raise the question of whether or human action can eradicate not only the animals themselves, but also the anima—the spirit—of the wilderness. The question reflects the imbued tension of the planet today each time people transform the environment into a more profitable, less threatening, or more manageable place.