Hunting lodges

The photographic series Hunting Lodges (2009-2012) features hunting lodges with related facilities, spaces, surroundings and an abattoir, located in the county of Västra Götaland in the west of Sweden, where I grew up. When I was growing up, my friend’s parents used to clean and carve wild game in their kitchen during the hunting season, and to prepare the meat and intestines for freezing. Stories of how the particular animal was tracked and eventually shot were told as hunting dogs barked madly around us in the kitchen; different cuts of meat were placed in different stainless-steel bowls; the hunters drank and thanked the animal for its sacrifice and for providing the family with meat. As my own family is vegetarian, the handling of meat was otherwise unknown to me, and the practices I was witnessing were unfamiliar yet formed acutely recognisable elements of the rural culture of which I was a part.

Some hunting lodges are former cottages or sheds, others are purpose-built huts in which hunters can gather for meetings or for shelter during the hunting seasons. Some of these structures are private and owned by members of a hunting team, while others are communal, unlocked and for public use (although also used by the local hunting team). Many of the hunting lodges show signs of interaction, collaboration, unity: meeting rooms that smell of coffee, regional maps on tables, handwritten notes on the walls, photographs, hunting-related décor and bottles of schnapps on the tops of cupboards. The photographs have been shown in group exhibitions and also featured in my solo exhibition disruptive desires in 2012.