I Was Like So Scared
This summer I visited the Bronx zoo with my niece, who wanted to find the snake exhibit. Other children seemed to be doing the same, playfully looking for the "scariest" animals so they could shriek, bond, and laugh about their fear.
The trip inspired a set of prints about how we think about animals. I printed these at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum last August, with wood type on old educational images.
After making the prints I read John Berger's Why Look at Animals and was surprised to find that he used one of the words I did, the word SPECTACLE. For example, he wrote: "The animals of the mind, instead of being dispersed, have been co-opted into other categories so that the category animal has lost its central importance. Mostly they have been co-opted into the family and into the spectacle." When I combined the word with a picture of a hippo, I was thinking of the tendency to anthropomorphize hippos as silly, entertaining fatties.
Berger nails the tragedy of zoos: "However you look at these animals, even if the animal is up against the bars, less than a foot from you, looking outwards in the public direction, you are looking at something that has been rendered absolutely marginal..."
The trip inspired a set of prints about how we think about animals. I printed these at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum last August, with wood type on old educational images.
After making the prints I read John Berger's Why Look at Animals and was surprised to find that he used one of the words I did, the word SPECTACLE. For example, he wrote: "The animals of the mind, instead of being dispersed, have been co-opted into other categories so that the category animal has lost its central importance. Mostly they have been co-opted into the family and into the spectacle." When I combined the word with a picture of a hippo, I was thinking of the tendency to anthropomorphize hippos as silly, entertaining fatties.
Berger nails the tragedy of zoos: "However you look at these animals, even if the animal is up against the bars, less than a foot from you, looking outwards in the public direction, you are looking at something that has been rendered absolutely marginal..."
photos by Bill Deere