Die technische Produktion des tierlichen Antlitzes. Carl Georg Schillings Mit Blitzlicht und Büchse als Reisebericht, Fotobuch und koloniales Zeugnis

This article offers a historical and theoretical exploration of the possibility of capturing the ‘Antlitz’ of animals in the day and night photographs featured in Carl Georg Schilling’s 1905 book Mit Blitzlicht und Büchse. The concept of Natururkunde as it pertains to these photographs, is examined alongside the technical and colonial contexts in which they were produced, as well as their accompanying narrative effects. In seeking to decolonize intermediality, the article considers Emmanuel Lévinas’ notion of the Antlitz and how an animal’s Antlitz can be perceived through wildlife photography as a resistant aesthetics in human-animal-technology relations.