Photography of animals is almost as old as photography itself, with the first photo of a living animal believed to be an image of a cow taken by French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey in 1842.
The first daguerreotypes of cats and dogs are believed to date from a similar period, and for almost as long as we’ve had cameras, we’ve been pointing them at animals.
A fascinating new exhibition running at the Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, examines the long, complex history of photography’s relationship with animals and the natural world.
Titled ‘Modèle animal’, it draws upon 200 years of photographic history to display how animals have served all manner of purposes for photographers, and how that photography has in turn informed broader perceptions and attitudes towards the natural world.
The exhibition comprises more than 500 photographs from 220 artists, including wry street portraits from the likes of Elliott Erwitt and Martin Parr, which demonstrate how omnipresent domestic animals have become in our cities and everyday lives.
The exhibition isn’t a cutesy whitewashing of history; it examines photography’s relationship with practices that exploit animals, such as circus performance.
Included are Pieter Hugo’s stunning portraits of the ‘Hyena Men’ – an itinerant Nigerian group who would perform death-defying feats with hyenas.
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The images are stunning, spectacular, and create an acute discomfort in the viewer who knows the story behind them.
The exhibition proceeds right up to the modern age, where the internet has once again transformed our relationship with animals.
Animal photography has had enormous scientific ramifications too, with Nicéphore Niépce’s image of a view from a window in 1836 paving the way for advancements in fields such as macro and micro photography.
Edward Muybridge’s famous chronophotography reshaped the common understanding of how horses move, and advanced techniques such as X-ray photography have revealed hitherto invisible details of the natural world.
The exhibition reveals something constant about our relationship with animals – our genuine, abiding affection for them, as seen in Jean-Baptiste Huynh’s portrait of Buckley, the dog.
They have included a stunningly long list of luminaries, including the likes of Helmut Newton, Daido Moriyama, and Sebastião Salgado in the exhibition.
It is running at Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles.
