Livestock As Art
Boing Boing readers will have already seen this, but this photo album of farmers and their livestock captivated me. In each, you can see an owner’s pride and affection for the beast that shares the frame. The animals have a beauty and a nobility, but also a surprising alien quality. They are still other, though we have lived with these breeds for centuries and even millennia. Do we read the personality correctly? Or do we simply have no basis to decide what an animal is feeling?
The photos also remind you how many breeds of livestock there are in the world. Each has roots in a particular place and a culture. Each originated from one human population’s needs.
Spend some time to look your food in the eye. You’ll enjoy it. The photographer has included versions suitable for your desktop’s background; I might download a few.
Thank you for posting that, Derrick–I love a lot of those photographs.
The obvious pride and love the people have in their animals is touching–and puts the lie to PETA’s extremist claims that all humans who raise animals or eat meat and milk are slavers, murderers and rapists.
My favorite were the Alpine goats….I adore goats.