The Tiger Hunt: Bagged

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Artist: Willoughby Wallace Hooper (British, 1837–1912)
Medium: Albumen print from wet collodion negative on medium, semigloss photographic paper
Size: Sheet: 7 × 9 3/8 inches (17.8 × 23.8 cm)
Museum: Yale Center for British Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

Photography quickly became a vehicle for telling stories and shaping attitudes about colonization. Willoughby Wallace Hooper was an English military officer and amateur photographer who lived in India for nearly forty years. In 1872, he produced a series of twelve staged photographs depicting a tiger hunt. This image, the ninth in the sequence, was made near Secunderabad in southern India. It appears to show colonial hunters and local assistants spotting a tiger on a rocky ledge. In fact, the animal had already been killed. Hooper’s image serves to dramatize the leisure activities of Britain’s imperial ruling classes. Whether or not it was his conscious intention, in doing so he extols their power over India’s people, animals, and land.

Text: Yale Center for British Art.