GREEN ROOM: LIVE WEBINAR
Summary of the Discussion
Jo-Anne McArthur a Photojournalist that focuses on animal rights emphasizes the need for the human race to notice the existence of animals and the cruelty that the animal face. She mentioned that animals are sentient beings and should be treated with respect. She shared some of her work which exposes some conditions that animals have to face which is against their rights.
LISTEN TO PODCAST
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Jo-Anne McArthur is an award-winning photographer, author, and sought-after speaker.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Dr. Jason J. McSparren is an educator, researcher, and administrator with a PhD. in Global Governance and Human Security from Massachusetts Boston.
Q&A
Jason McSparren: Our friends in the audience please welcome Jo-Anne McArthur to the Green Room today. Hello Joanne
Jo-Anne McArthur: Hello thanks so much for inviting me.
Jason McSparren: Glad to have you Joanne. Can you see the screen? Okay. Do you see the photos?
Jo-Anne McArthur: I can see your Power point. Yes
Jason McSparren: Okay very well, so like we could take a quick look at some of your photos just to give our audience an idea of some of the images that you might seein this latest book hidden animals in the anthropocene and it's an interesting cover.
Jo-Anne McArthur: I will say that all of the work you'll see in this Power point is mine, except for those which are captioned otherwise, this book hidden is my first foray into editing for a large photographic book so this isactually the work of 40 photojournalists globally. I knew I wanted to really be all encompassing with the subject matter and that I couldn't cover that alone with the work that I had done, so we see here images from Celine Magnolia, Aitor Garmendia This image is not mine, what we're seeing here are cultural events like this one here unusual and odd and horrific an incredible capture by Aitor Garmendia who's one of the leading animal photojournalists in the world right now. He's quite relentless in his work and you can skip back to the image of the pig in the garbage also a really highly unusual situation for us to see pigs end up in dumps all the time but this is out of sight and out of mind and what I mean by the ‘hidden animals’ which is the topic of the book, is that animals especially those who are farmed for food are raised by the billions and yet we only ever interact with them on our plate or the fur bearing animals we interact with them when we wear them and yet they are kept by the billions every single day and so we wanted to illuminate their lives so that we can make better decisions think a little bit more critically have important discussions because a lot of us care about animals but we care about the animals who are more familiar to us. Wildlife, companion animals and yet there are others who are as equally sentient and yet we fail to see and we mistreat horribly. An example is here, you've landed on this image of a turtle being filleted which is a word you used. I had not thought of that word for this image but that's exactly what's happening.The turtle is alive and these things just you need to be seen by us
Jason McSparren: Can I ask you a question please?
Jo-Anne McArthur: Please
Jason McSparren: Could you expound a little bit on the idea of animals being sentient beings. Just to kind of give us a little bit of context for some people in our audience who may not actually understand what you're talking about or might need a little bit more background on that idea
Jo-Anne McArthur: Yeah all animals are feeling animals, they are complex and we aren't taught that they are complex, we are taught that they have complex emotional lives or that they make complex decisions and because they have these qualities, it means that they can experience complex emotions like joy and fear and sorrow and anxiety and jealousy. Some of these emotions I suppose are not complex but they do get complex and any of us who live with a cat or a dog or an animal know that they experience the world in us, all sorts of ways just as we do but so do the animals we eat now the pigs and the chickens and the turkeys and the cows and so because they can experience life as we do in many ways they can experience joy and suffering and fear. I think that needs to be known and it was really exciting is that ethology, the study of animal behavior is really growing and so you don't just have to take my word or the word of a dog owner that animals have feeling. We know this because they've been studied and we see incredible behaviors in fish, in insects, in chickens, and it's pretty exciting and so the more we know about how animals feel and think the more it becomes difficult for us to just or at least in theory should be more difficult for us to just put them away in cages that they can't turn around. In horrific fur farms where they're crammed into cages for our benefit especially when we don't need to do this, we don't need to keep animals in these conditions for our survival.
Jason McSparren: Great and that actually prompts another question, again just why is it important to make these animals visible, you mentioned these hidden animals with whom humans have such a close relationship and yet humans fail to see these animals.You mention the animals that we eat, the animals that we wear, we use for research, sometimes we put these animals to work,we view them as entertainment as we can see on the screen right now and also the animals that we sacrifice in the name of tradition and religion and you started to talk about that already, but I'd like if you can just elaborate on that a little bit more why is it important for the general public to see these animals.
Jo-Anne McArthur: Well as the old saying goes, I guess seeing is believing and sometimes we have to see something to become aware of it. It's really that simple and that is the job of photojournalists, photographers and not just animal photojournalists like myself but conflict photographers for example, they are going out into the field to document wars, the things that we do to one another,we need to take what's going on in the world and bring that home and literally bring that into our homes where we're sitting right now, so that we can learn something new and as we know that should and often does lead to conversations and caring and change. Photographers create proof and that's what we're doing here with hidden, this is proof of what is, what needs to be seen and in most of these cases probably all of these cases what should not be. These images don't sugarcoat how we treat animals, it's a five-pound tome of a book and it is modeled after other books of war photography, about how we treat others and long ago I was inspired by war photographers to do something similar for animals. I felt that other animals, non-human animals deserved the visibility that we attempt to give to other suffering people, other suffering animals I guess.
Jason McSparren: Sure, no I totally agree. It's really one of those things as you say you know they're unseen. right, but we interact with animals constantly. In the real life the whole idea of the unseen, we talk about industrial farming etc, even we're seeing in some of these images it's not necessarily even industrial farming. It's small community farming, it's just subsistence living in some cases but the way that we interact with these animals, the way that we may take their lives prior to eating them, etc, it seems to be a pretty brutal life for these animals and the more that people know it could change people's attitudes toward their diets, it could also possibly even improve the lives of the food animals, etc and also the animals that we see in entertainment and things along those lines. So at this point, I just like to mention that folks you can take a look at the Green Institute website for a lot of features and activities. It's https://greeninstitute.ng/. And one of the things that you might be able to find there is this really interesting book, the Principles of Green and Sustainable Science written by the Director of the Green Institute and Founder Adenike Akinsemolu. This book focuses on the Principles of Green and Sustainable Science using various case studies that it contributes to the literature in science, in the environmental fields by providing information on scientific aspects of sustainability. So the Principles of Green and Sustainability Science can be found at the greeninstitute.ng. And as we move on, Jo-Anne I'd like to ask you, many of our audience members are maybe aspiring photographers or maybe just college age people thinking about how they can contribute to the world or how they might be able to build a career. So I ask you what motivated you to pursue this subject matter for your artistic expression and professional focus
Jo-Anne McArthur: Well there certainly wasn't to be lying there. I'm just someone who was really interested in the world and also very interested in suffering and the causes of suffering and when I saw that there were these billions of animals that we just weren't thinking about I became really gripped by this, very curious and started turning my lens away from the other things I was photographing, street photography and humanitarian causes towards animals and sometimes I could just go down the street and photograph the animals coming to the slaughterhouse. Sometimes I traveled farther fields, sometimes I went to a local circus rodeo or zoo and something interesting about using this word hidden. Sometimes it's not just the animals that are literally hidden but their uses and their experiences are hidden to us so what I mean by that is, for example, in circuses and zoos the animals are in plain view they're not hidden at all but we aren't really seeing them. We're there for our enjoyment, our education, sometimes it's just you know a day out for something to do and yet while the animal is right in front of us we aren't really thinking about them, wearen't thinking about their experience, how they might feel about having to perform, how they might have felt about being broken in order to perform and so their lives even though right there in front of us remain hidden as well and that was actually the subject of my second book called captive which is a look atanimals in zoos and aquaria worldwide.
Jason McSparren: Yes I hope to have time to focus on that as well
Jo-Anne McArthur: Yes
Favourite Quote
“Well as the old saying goes, I guess seeing is believing and sometimes we have to see something to become aware of it.”
Top Comments
Thank you for showing us. It is an eye opener to cruety faced by the animals that we refused to be aware of- Anonymous