Death is a topic humans have always talked about, from ancient myths about underworlds, to medical science fighting to keep people alive, it has never stopped being a hot topic. Recently, it has found itself associated with photography. In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes gives his view of the importance of the topic: “For Death must be somewhere in a society; if it is no longer (or less intensely) in religion, it must be elsewhere; perhaps in this image which produces Death while trying to preserve life” (92). Barthes always refers to humanity when he talks about the subject in photos, but some of his statements from Camera Lucida are applicable to animals, specifically when people use them.
The use and abuse of animals is not new to modern society, nor is taking permanent images of it; there have recorded images of animals at the mercy of humans as far back as Thomas Edison in 1903, when he electrocuted an elephant as part of his campaign to promote his DC electric current system. In “The Death of the Animal” from Art and Animals, Giovanni Aloi discusses the larger-scale torture of animals for testing and farming. At one point he says, “[w]e could go as far as to argue that we implicitly subscribe to a ‘hierarchy of animal killing’ … [in] which ... our biological distance from some groups allows us to disengage with their behaviour, the value of their lives, and consequently their pain” (117). He also mentions how seeing a single animal suffering causes an uproar, but there are mass killings of animals that continue every day. I will analyze how photographs of animals in human designed situations are displayed, primarily focusing on cosmetic and medical testing and factory farming. I will also be analyzing the differences between portrait photos and group photos of these animals.
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| rabbit tested on to see the irritating burning effects of chemicals in cosmetics http://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/archive/tags/animal+testing/default.aspx |
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| mouse tested on for cosmetics http://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/archive/tags/animal+testing/default.aspx |
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| monkey being tested on in a lab http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/photos.aspx |
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| cat before and after experimental surgery http://www.peta.org/features/uw-madison-cruelty.aspx |
All of these photos illustrating animal testing hare one thing in common, the human element. Rabbits do not naturally have patches of shaved fur, mice do not normally suffer from chemical burns, monkeys do not scream at gloved-fingers, and cats do not lie on surgical tables on their own. Aloi mentions the obvious human touch in pictures like this too: “[t]he objective of deconditioning is to view things without a predetermined frame of mind, leading to a predictable response. This effect becomes even more unsettling when the viewer realises that the disfigurement and fragmentation inflicted on the animal body bears the unmistaken signature of human action” (131). His words, “disfigurement” and “fragmentation” are realistic descriptions for these animals, and the fact that people like us have done this to these animals, does provide a new horror to the photos.
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| factory farmed chickens http://www.farmsanctuary.org/photos/?album=5&gallery=9#content |
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| chicken manure beneath them, dead chicken laying on top http://www.farmsanctuary.org/photos/?album=5&gallery=9#content |
While the photos of animals used for testing are portraits, there are images of suffering animals in massive numbers. Pictures of factory farming present the mistreatment of animals on a larger scale. At the same time, factory farming does not generate as much discussion as the single animal portraits do, but they can be helpful in getting discussions about them started.
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| cows in their pens on a farm http://www.farmsanctuary.org/photos/?album=5&gallery=17&nggpage=2#content |
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| pigs in pens http://www.farmsanctuary.org/photos/?album=5&gallery=14&nggpage=2#content |
Regardless of the specific kind of harm people are inflicting on these different animals, seeing them provokes people to ask if the images are real, and if the animal is alive. Barthes addresses the real and alive in Camera Lucida:
For the photograph's
immobility is somehow the result of a perverse confusion between two concepts:
the Real and the Live: by attesting that the object has been real, the
photograph surreptitiously induces belief that it is alive, because of that
delusion which makes us attribute to Reality an absolute superior, somehow
eternal value; but by shifting this reality to the past ('this-has-been'), the
photograph suggests that it is already dead. (79)
As Barthes says, these
images make it seem as though the creature is already dead. Even the images
like that of the cat, where survival has happened, we know it will die soon; it
is merely a question of whether it will be because of the testing or not. In
portraits, we take in one tragedy at a time, able to forget the mass-tragedies.
We can ask questions of specific people, was it the hand holding the animal?
The scientists in the laboratory? What company funded the testing? We can rally against the
torture and make (slightly) direct demands! Then we there are factory farm
photos, and suddenly there are hundreds, thousands, of lives living in one
giant tragedy. Who is to blame? The farms supply multiple companies, and have
many workers, not to mention all the machines that do a good portion of the
work. Many of us even eat the very lives we can see suffering. However, the
suffering the pictures show is a reminder that the animals we are looking at are
not all dead, some of them are still alive. Group shots show huge numbers of
living creatures. I feel a line from Barthes end this best, “They have their
whole lives before them; but also they are dead (today), they are then already dead (yesterday)” (96).
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981
Aloi, Giovanni. "The Death of the Animal." Art and Animals. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012. 113-137
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