Horns of plenty

In the age of factory farming, the ancient sublimity of cattle is easy to forget or suppress. South African photographer Daniel Naudé has crafted a powerful reminder

In Sightings of the Sacred, recently shown at the Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town, Daniel Naude documented the presences of extraordinary cattle in Uganda, Madagascar and India.

His quest for the bovine divine began with a two-week sojourn in the Ankole region of south-western Uganda. "The inspiration was an article I read about the Ankole long-horn cattle and their bond with the Bahima people," says Naudé. "They have such a majestic presence. Some estimate they may be extinct in 30 years because they're being cross-bred with Holsteins. So the authorities moved many of them to a reserve where they graze among wild animals."

Animal portraiture is Naudé's calling - his acclaimed 2012 book Animal Farm is a rich document of South Africa's domestic beasts, both feral or cherished. "I was always fascinated by 18th-century studies of animals, and developed a style with a square format, composed so that the underpart of the animal cuts the horizon. The biggest thing for me is this very still, reciprocal encounter, in which I'm in a hyper-focused state, and so is the animal. The gigantic horns make the effect more surreal. People think, is that Photoshopped? Those can't be real!

"For the Bahima, the Ankole are everything - they're even portrayed on their banknotes, and carry the culture forward.

"Later I went to Paris and saw carved Madagascan funeral posts in a museum, with the skulls of Zebu cattle mounted on them. So I decided to explore the spiritual quality of cattle in Madagascar, where Zebu are a magical vehicle to communicate with the afterlife: they sacrifice a beast and place its head on their tombs. And they use the word 'fadi' - forbidden - to describe those tombs. You stay away, and if you need to point at one, you do so with your knuckle, not your finger. Near the city of Tana, they placed a stone plate in front of a thicket tree, with a Zebu head on it, and the tree's growth is seen as reflecting the health of the city.

"I was fascinated by the Asian-African cultural mix on the island - and the fact that the first cattle, domesticated in India, were Zebu. So then I added a third element: the Mattu Pongal harvest festival in Tamil Nadu, south India, where the cattle are painted and decorated with flowers. The festival worships Nandi, the bull god, the mount and gatekeeper of Shiva. That really revealed the spiritual roots of the human bond with cattle. I also saw traces of it in all three countries: how herders walk with them, touch them, work with them - the affection mixed with reverence.

"But the most important thing is the encounter: I wanted that stillness to be carried over to the viewer," says Naudé.

One of the most compelling shots is of a huddled group of Ankole - a departure from Naudé's habitual format. "I had the Hasselblad in my hand, and I saw this amazing animal with lyre-shaped horns. But as I looked through the viewfinder, they were all moving and bumping against each other. Then suddenly the big one was looking at me, and the other one on the left, too, and it looked like all of them were having a conversation.

"You can plan nothing. You just have to be there. And I could select my backgrounds by waiting at the right place on their daily grazing route, when the light was perfect.

"When shooting with film, when you're looking through the viewfinder, you're more tense because there are only 12 exposures per roll. Because I only see the image for a fraction of a second, it develops inside my mind after I've taken it. The magic is while you walk away, thinking. So by the time I get to process the film, I know that these are the colours, this is the mood that I want.

"In Uganda, I walked with this herder, who has a whip and a piece of rope and a plastic can. When he gets hungry, he just milks the cow and drinks. And I'm here with my energy bars and my water, feeling quite soft. At one point he told me: 'Don't go to that herd, they're running with buffalo.' And then we saw a half-buffalo calf, so we realised we must stay away."

In India, Naudé switched from a Hasselblad to a Phase 1, a medium-format digital camera. "Because film is getting more expensive. But shooting film all these years has helped me to take seeing more seriously, to think before clicking the shutter. When I was shooting for weeks on end in the Karoo, I had only nine rolls of film - that's all I could afford. Had to keep a diary noting all the shots I wanted. It imposes a discipline that helps you when you go digital."