Anastasia Photo presents Hwange: Cecil’s Kingdom, Brent Stapelkamp’s first exhibition at the gallery. Stapelkamp has served as a lion researcher with Oxford University’s Hwange Lion Research Project for the past 10 years. He found himself at the epicenter of the “Cecil Storm” in 2015, as he was the last person to collar and photograph the beloved lion before his senseless slaughter in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park.
The exhibition is a record of Hwange National Park’s inhabitants and their precarious position in a world of infrastructure and boundaries. “Thousands of hours in the company of lions meant I got a unique perspective of their lives and the threats that they face,” says Stapelkamp. Hwange’s only boundary between protected territory and legal hunting grounds is a railway line. It was this railroad that Cecil was lured over before meeting his death. Brent is devoted to finding ways for people and wildlife to sustainably coexist. His body of work encourages viewers to realize these animals’ increasingly challenging place in the world.
As a result of the media and documentation surrounding Cecil’s killing, an international outcry pushed 42 airlines to reaffirm bans on wildlife trophy shipments on their carriers. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have listed lions in central and West Africa as endangered, and those in southern and East Africa as threatened, and trophies of endangered lions are prohibited in the United States.
EXHIBITION
Hwange, Cecil’s Kingdom
Photographs by Brent Stapelkamp.
From April 5 to May 29, 2016
Anastasia Photo
143 Ludlow Street
New York, NY 10002
United States
http://www.anastasia-photo.com
