PFN: Coming face-to-face on Zoom with animal photographer and filmmaker Jo-Anne McArthur, stirs many emotions. One is aware and in awe of her courageous journey – over 60 countries in nearly 20 years – using her camera to document the sacrifice made by animals used by humans for things like food, research, entertainment, clothing, tradition and religion.
McArthur is one of the world’s foremost animal photojournalists, the author of several books on our relationship with animals and the focus of an eye-opening 2013 documentary The Ghosts in Our Machine that helped expose our largely invisible use of animals.
Her work is especially important now. Our relationship with animals is at the centre of our struggle with a global pandemic -- a zoonotic disease born of our encroachment into the natural world. Modern life is destroying Earth’s biodiversity – habitats and the mass extinction of animal species – and our industrialized food system is a leading contributor to the climate crisis and food insecurity.
McArthur’s photographic odyssey has captured images of animals suffering in fur farms in Norway, Canada and the Netherlands, brought us scenes of the industrialized-scale of abuse of diary cows, pigs, chickens, and ducks in factory farms in Europe, North America and Asia. Her camera has revealed behind-the-scenes images of the misery of primates confined in science labs; the inhumane slaughter of fish and sea life in Asian markets; pigs trying to escape the lethal flood waters from hurricanes in North Carolina; and iconic animals such as kangaroos and koalas fleeing the Australian bushfires that killed well over a billion animals in January.
In bearing witness to our unthinking treatment of animals, she explores and captures the reality of our true relationship with those we use and misuse, in stark contrast to the storybook and bucolic images of happy cows and cute, furry wild animals we’ve been conditioned to believe. Sometimes these animals are hidden in factory farms being raised for fur or meat, sometimes they are hidden in plain sight.
When we meet McArthur, she is clearly excited about the upcoming release of her third book, HIDDEN: Animals in the Anthropocene, a global collection of 210 photographs from 40 photographers that offers an unflinching look at the suffering of animals used by humans. See Part One of this blog.
Holding up the book, McArthur takes us through some of the photo spreads – one of an elephant being forced to perform underwater for a crowd of people watching through the glass of an aquarium. The story of the photo is what do they see? Not what McArthur sees which is the indignity of this intelligent animal – so far from its natural home — being forced to perform, as humans enjoy the spectacle and think uncritically about what they are seeing. The image is a metaphor for the abuse of animals hiding in plain sight, “humans not seeing a problem even when it is right in front of our faces,” says McArthur.
Next, she shows her photo of a man clubbing a pig in a food market in Thailand. The graphic image exposes the reality of the slaughterhouse and echoes the slaughter of animals in the industrialized animal agriculture system that is carefully hidden from us.
Opposite the image is a prayer by Buddhist philosopher Shantideva written some 1,200 years ago chosen by McArthur to capture how she feels about the photo. It is a prayer “not just for the non-human animal but for the humans in the picture as well,” she says. It is also her prayer for the world.
“May the frightened cease to be afraid and those bound be freed;
May the powerless find power, and may people think of benefitting each other.
For as long as space remains, for as long as sentient beings remain,
Until then may I too remain to dispel the miseries of the world.”
— ShantiDeva
Here is an edited version of our conversation with Jo-Anne
Q: How do you approach changing people’s hearts and minds about our relationship with animals?
A: You have to meet people where they are. Everyone is on a different journey with regards to seeing animals, and thinking about animals, and acting for animals. There are a tremendous number of compassionate people in the world but they just might have a really small circle of compassion. I think this is one of the problems. We are not conditioned and nurtured to widen our circle of compassion. The more we break our hearts open the more open we are to seeing others and the suffering of others.
Q: How did you get into this work?
A: Do what you love to do. That was the advice from my Mom so I started getting into photography. She then had second thoughts – especially when the work became dangerous -- and said “that’s not what I meant!” But ask yourself, what are you good at? Play to your strengths. That’s the way to have longevity.
Q: What is animal photojournalism?
A: It’s an evolving genre that our team at We Animals Media is helping to build and promote. We’re defining it as a confluence of conflict and conservation photography. It’s not wildlife or pet photography. It’s a genre born out of necessity, out of the political climate, the environmental climate, it’s newsy. We put ourselves in danger and go to places that no one in their right mind would go and we document things that are very very important.
HIDDEN is a book of animal photojournalism. The hidden animals are equally important as the wildlife and our pets but aren’t considered as such because we use them. They are animals we eat, wear, use for research, entertainment -- like the elephant in the aquarium -- an animal in plain view, right in front of us, that we fail to really see because they are objects for our use. We want people to see their lives with different eyes.
Photo: Andrew Skowron, HIDDEN: Animals in the Anthropocene
Q: Your mission is to have us look at these difficult images and really see the animal. How do you get people to engage in this and not look away?
A: We are so afraid of suffering which is why we avoid looking at suffering. We have a very limited understanding of it. We hear the word and think ‘I don’t want that’ when, in fact, suffering is a learning opportunity to care more and to grow. It’s an opportunity for resilience. The closer we can get to it and see that we can take part without getting destroyed, is galvanizing.
PFN: Jo-Anne’s calm and friendly demeanour betrays nothing of the trauma she has witnessed and suffered in her quest to tell the stories of these animals. Her serenity seems to rest partly in a deep wisdom born of her travels and travails. She unpacks the psychology of suffering to help us comprehend. Her hope is that if we are given the opportunity to see and to care, we will.
Q: How do you cope with the harrowing images and experiences that you document?
A: I have learned as an animal photojournalist that I can get through the suffering I witness and experience, because I’m an empathetic person, by turning it into action for others. I also don’t have to carry it. If I were to carry the pain that I see all the time I would have quit years ago because it’s exhausting and demoralizing. But I can observe the pain in the world without carrying it on my shoulders every day.
At first, I had to learn how to do that, I’m generally a really happy person but after all that fieldwork I started to get depressed and was diagnosed with PTSD so I had to learn not to take part in the suffering of others but to continue to do something about it. I studied meditation and I meditate on our impermanence and just how lucky we are to be here in this brief moment in time, how improbable and how fortunate. So, I try to live in the present and make the most of every moment and be happy. I want that for everybody. We can just do more and be more if we’re happy.
PFN: We know from neuroscience and psychological studies that we cannot easily relate to or comprehend, for example, the approximately 70 billion land animals killed every year for our food. McArthur’s images bring us to the individual pig or dairy calf or mink or elephant who represent the billions we never see. She shows us the face of the individual invisible among the billions.
Photo: Silver mink on a Canadian fur farm. Jo-Anne McArthur/#MakeFurHistory
Q: Poland is in the process of banning mink fur farming largely because of a recent documentary that showed the horrific conditions of animals on Polish mink farms. Is public opinion changing regarding our relationship with animals?
A: I would love to see a ban on mink farming here in Canada. It’s rampant in Nova Scotia and they are denuding the ocean of fish to feed the mink so it’s a double whammy. Even worse, both industries receive subsidies and it needs to stop. It’s an absolute blight on our sensibility and our compassion. I think if Canadians could go inside those places with me they might think about it a little more than they do now. Norway announced a ban on fur farming a couple of years ago to take effect in 2025. The Netherlands just announced they are moving up their ban on mink farming to take effect in 2021. And in France, it’ll be phased out over the next four years. These are signs of things to come.
Q: HIDDEN is your latest vehicle to tell this story, how do you ensure that more people can see the power of your imagery?
A: Disseminating the visuals is really important but the images are hard to get published. You have to create your own media. We’ve created an archive of more then 10,000 images and videos free to anyone helping animals as a way of getting them out there. We are focusing right now on chickens and layer hens, as they suffer in such vast numbers, to support the ongoing campaigns to improve their welfare.
Photo: Konrad Lozinski, HIDDEN: Animals in the Anthropocene
Q: Are the current contemporaneous crises of the pandemic, mass extinction of animals, biodiversity destruction, increasing awareness of the problems in our broken food system helping raise public concern about our fractured relationship with animals?
A: Wouldn’t it be great if we all just faced up to the fact that Corona and other diseases like bird flu and swine flu, came from our use, overuse, and misuse of animals? And make the obvious decision not to do that? But we’re creatures of habit, of comfort, we’re taught that the use of animals is okay because it’s tied into tradition and family and festivities. We should make humane education for young people as important as the arts or sciences — learning to be good stewards and to be kind to one another. We’ll get there because we have to. How many more disasters can we survive?
Q. What’s next?
A. We’ll continue to document what’s happening to animals in the world. But we’re also going to do more stories on change and progress and the future of food to get people pumped and inspired, and not be so afraid of trying and supporting new things. A lot of resources should be put into championing alternatives and empowering people.
Q: Are you seeing a change in public attitudes towards animals, are you making progress?
A: I do think we are on the right side of history and that gives me energy and momentum. We know what we’re doing to the world with animal use, with factory farms contributing to deforestation and climate change. The reality is factory farms are not necessary, they do not need to exist, they could end tomorrow and the world would be a better place. I see some places getting better but some are also getting worse, like the increase in meat-eating in the developing world. But exciting things are happening in the world and I choose to focus on the good.
Sign up below to receive “Planet Friendly News” every month.