DEAD OR ALIVE
Alive or dead, real or represented by statues or stuffed animals, for human beings, animals have always been source of enchantment. Every child has a primitive attraction for those other living creatures that inhabit the hearth. They start by being toys and then become working tools, company tools, nutrition tools. Human being still loves them, enslaves them, eats them, traps them, divinize them.
They are the main characters in most of the comic books and games, they are glorified and massacred. I am still, in some way, attracted by every animal whether it’s alive or dead, whether it’s wild or reluctantly our roommate, whether it is made of plastic or of marble, whether it’s free or defeated. If it were for me, I would shut down all the big Aquariums, but I must admit that I love to linger there for hours.
A few things cry out for justice as much as the zoo, yet the opportunity of watching up-close some of those animals stays a calling that I pretend not to hear. Even though diving and observing underwater life is likely my favorite activity, I do enjoy visiting fish markets. I quit, but I love fishing. I can’t pretend I didn’t feel a predominant feeling the only time I hunted an animal with a firearm. I am sure that no healthy human being has good reasons to keep on eating meat, but even if quite rarely, I do eat meat and fish. This series of pictures origins from the contradictory coexistence between my proud animalist conscience and a never soothed juvenile fascination for animal morphology. A paradox that carries within itself a large unsolved part of any philosophy or ecosophy.
