The Bovine Prophecy

As if meeting us from the sea, patiently awaiting our arrival, we encounter them. Mythical. Majestic. These beasts seem to occupy a space and time that is not entirely our own.

The creatures we are confronted with in this photographic body of work by Daniel Naudé are forceful reminders of our complex relationship with the animal world. Over a period of ten years, Naudé travelled to the beaches of the Wild Coast to document the indigenous Xhosa cattle that live on these shores.

This was a process that called for patience, with Naudé relentlessly scouting the area, waiting for a particular animal to be in just the right place at the right time. The release of the camera’s shutter would signal that moment when Naudé would, after careful consideration, transform animal into image. As with his previous work, a delicate stillness permeates this photographic encounter. The weather and the effect of light on the landscape, as well as the temperament and composure of the animal, would all be taken into account. Only if he finds these variables to be in perfect balance would Naudé take a photograph. As he explains:

This photographic series is set in the Wild Coast of South Africa, where cattle have left an indelible mark on the history of the region. It is here, after all, that Nongqawuse had her fated encounter with the spirits of her Xhosa ancestors in 1856. The importation of Friesland bulls from the Netherlands by white settlers, and the subsequent spread of bovine lung disease, lead to the decimation of local cattle. When Nongqawuse had a vision in which her ancestors promised retribution and restoration, it seemed as if some radical turnaround in the diminishing livelihood of the Xhosa people was possible. According to legend, the ancestors foretold that the dead of the Xhosa nation would rise from the sea, bringing with them new, uncontaminated cattle. This, the ancestors promised, would happen on the condition that the Xhosa people slaughter all their cattle and destroy their crops. After a year of systematic destruction, the Xhosa was left waiting on the shores of sea, hoping on a return that never came to pass. This event marked the demise of the precolonial Xhosa nation, with an estimated 40 000 people dying of starvation. As a result, the Wild Coast speaks of a complex relationship between human, animal and ocean.

Against this historical backdrop, Naude ́ decided to investigate the highly emotive relationship between human and animal – a theme that pervades much of his work to date. The wonder of his photographic practice lies in his ability to set up an intimate visual encounter between human viewer and animal subject. For Naude ́, there is a vibrant energy that comes from that moment when he connects with an animal through the lens of his camera. And it is this exact moment of mutual recognition that he wishes to share with the viewer. As he maintains:

As a result of this careful reading of the animal subject matter, each image reflects a different affective tonality. This can also be attributed to the postproduction process. As the project evolved and the body of images grew, Naude ́ would strategically select which expressions he wanted to reveal in each portrait. He would look at the series as a whole and make changes in the selection of photographs if he felt that some emotional quality was not present, or should be emphasised. If he found the same affective attributes to be present in a set of images, he would carefully scrutinise each image in order to decide which cow or bull works better in
a given scenario. It meant that he had to take various factors into consideration, ranging from the emotive to the compositional, to ensure that each showcased photograph is a unique artefact.
Such considerations are also in uenced by the landscape within which Naude ́ encounters the animal. In his words:

Appearing on the beach with the ocean lying hazily in the background, we meet the animal most often staring directly back at us. Naudé’s gaze on the animal has shifted from a side-profile view (which we saw in Animal Farm) to a frontal viewpoint. This was deliberately done, he explains, in order to “create the effect of looking at something that is reminiscent of the outline of the human figure. I wanted to evoke that feeling that one is meeting, face-to- face, some extraordinary creature, part human and part animal, that has just emerged from the sea”. In this way, Naudé ensures that his own telling of the story of the cattle does not relinquish that sense of mystery that pervades their existence.
It is exactly this fascination with the enigmatic nature of animals that draws Naude ́, again and again, to his subject matter. “Why the animal?”, I asked him during a conversation about his latest body of work. And he explained:

That, I would argue, is exactly the tie that binds us to history and makes the story of Nongqawuse so relevant to the contemporary moment. Never has our relationship with the natural world been in so much need of critical intervention. But as Naude ́ reminds us, our desire for finding some resolution to our own problems – for finding prophetic signs of change at the shores of the sea – is as old as legend.