the ANIMAL RITES PROJECT
The Animal Rites Project was started in part from a grant received from AZ Commission on the Arts in 1992.
I had begun to examine families and their use of and connection to animals... as a part of heritage, ritual and tradition. This project also has deep connections to celebration and holidays. Many people still raise their own animals for food.
This is an ongoing portfolio and these photographs are taken with the cooperation of many families that believe in traditional farm practices, and slaughter their animals at home.
I had begun to examine families and their use of and connection to animals... as a part of heritage, ritual and tradition. This project also has deep connections to celebration and holidays. Many people still raise their own animals for food.
This is an ongoing portfolio and these photographs are taken with the cooperation of many families that believe in traditional farm practices, and slaughter their animals at home.
SLAUGHTER DAYS
WARNING - GRAPHIC CONTENT The animals in these photographs are mostly raised at home, and slaughtered at home. The men I see do this were often butchers by profession. Some times animals are brought to homes to be slaughtered for celebrations such as weddings, quinceañeras or holidays. As a photographer, I am an observer and a guest. My own beliefs about eating animals (or absolutely not) are left at home. These customs are carried out as they always have been. It is difficult to see family animals suddenly be sacrificed in such a hands on way. It is far removed from the hidden atrocities that that happen within large scale industrial slaughter complexes. The sacrifice is the same, the death is the same. This is gritty and hard work. CLICK HERE to enter the SLAUGHTER DAYS portfolio. |
MEAT, DAIRY , FACTORY SLAUGHTER AND ACTIVISM
THIS year's World Day for Farm Animals event was held in Tolleson , AZ, It was the 30th anniversary of this global event that is held in major cities all over the world.
This plant processes a very large number of used and spent dairy cows that are no longer useful to the dairy farmers. |
After years of being forcibly impregnated, given hormones and antibiotics to grow faster and better withstand the conditions of the crowded dairy lots, these mothers meet the same fate as cattle bred solely for meat. They have never gotten to raise their calves. Their babies are forcibly removed at birth to be killed, whether raised and confined briefly for veal production , raised quickly to become milk producers themselves, or they are simply killed and discarded.
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