Matt Dunne - The Killing Sink

In 2017, in the remote South-East of Australia, a man called the police and reported that he had murdered more than 400 eagles over the last two years at the instruction of his boss. The news coverage of the criminal trial for this act was the starting point for artist Matt Dunne to explore the wider deliberate killing of the Wedge-Tailed Eagle. Dunne’s forthcoming book ‘The Killing Sink’ is part true crime and part a public act of grieving for what has been lost. Each photograph in Dunne’s book depicts a place where eagles have been killed, the animals themselves or the tools of their destruction. The images are black and white, echoing the detachment and impartiality of crime scene photography. The title of the book is drawn from the term ‘killing sink’, which is an area created when a territorial animal is killed and as a result, others of the same species are drawn to the location. The newcomers are subsequently killed and a cycle of killing is established. Collectively, the photog