La fierté du groupe

A few photographs from my father’s and grandfather’s albums caught my attention and led me to research further on hunting: they picture groups of hunters proudly posing with their kills. These images show peculiar moments in the relations between men (hunting remains almost exclusively reserved to men in Valais). A rich and interesting tension develops between those men gathered around dead animals; this “community of the crime” is posing in a very sensual, quasi homo-erotic way, hugging each other, putting their hands on the deer’s thighs and holding their riffle between their legs. From my father and grandfather’s photographs, I extract postures that I later rework, blow up and isolate in large drawings.

The title, La fierté du groupe, literally “The group’s pride” comes from my father’s annotations to the original picture in his album.