Wildlife Requiem, 1981 - 1983

James Balog made his first photographs at age eight or nine, using his mother’s Brownie camera, to photograph squirrels and rabbits in Pennsylvania. But the only adults around him who really cared about animals were hunters. With their guidance, he became a hunter too. By the age of 18, he had begun to question the morality of killing animals for recreation. But when he listened to the wail of a wounded rabbit as it died, he abandoned hunting as a form of sport. These images are from one of Balog’s earliest “personal projects,” distinct from his later professional assignments. They formed the subject of his first book, Wildlife Requiem (New York: International Center of Photography, 1984) and became a way to reconsider his ties to hunting. Decades would pass before he realized how much synchrony exists between hunting and photography. Each involves an intense search for the subject of interest, staring at it with great concentration using an instrument of technology, then pressing a trigger at a penultimate moment. But, he wrote, “If hunting negates life, photography affirms it.”