In fact, hyenas can be prolific, fearsome hunters in the wild and display intense loyalty to the pack. Yet, recovering an idealized image of the proud hyena may be as illusory a proposition as finding in the animal a “friend.” Through their interactions with humans, the hyenas in Hugo’s photographs have become the debased scavengers of cultural imagination. Wholly dependent upon the itinerant group, they move from town to town in an existence that guarantees little food. The hyena’s nomadic hunting and scavenging may play a central role in the ecosystem of the Serengeti, but photographed on the outskirts of Abudja, their wandering symbolically conjures the human condition of homelessness and exile. The hyenas have clearly been displaced, perhaps cruelly, into a human social framework where they function purely as a spectacle of displacement. Still, Hugo’s work complicates appeals to animal rights. These photographs present the hyena’s captivity as a double-sided relationship in which the humans may be just as displaced as their non-human counterparts. ...
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