"Cape Buffalo" - sketch"

The African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) is one of the animals most feared by African hunters. Its memory is legendary: a wounded buffalo can ambush its pursuer hours later. The power of its head — dominated by the 'boss', the massive horn-base that fuses the two horns together across the skull — is unmatched among the ungulates.

Here, no body, no staging — just the face of the buffalo filling the frame. The eyes half-sunk beneath the boss, the ridged muzzle, the unruly ears. One must look long at this head to read anything in it — and that is precisely the challenge: to find expression in a face that nothing predisposes to expressivity.