The portraits are jarring, to say the least. But when French photographer Pierre Abensur set out to take photos of hunters and their kills, he wasn’t necessarily aiming to shock.

“I wanted to make it as an homage to the ceremony distanced from the violence of the act, so without rifles, blood, and hunting dresses,” he said in an email. Which is how he ended up convincing hunters to dress in their finest attire and trudge out to the exact spot of the kill—with their fully taxidermied trophies in tow.

He said that the purpose of his work is “not to glorify or condemn the hunt,” but to highlight the complex and emotional relationships between humans and wildlife. Indeed, depending on your