Break at work
From All-Creatures.org Animal Rights/Vegan Activist Strategies Articles Archive

FROM Andrew Skowron, Animal Rights Photographer
November 2019

Dear bull, I stand straight in front of you, eye to eye, without any fear. All I feel is the immensity of your sorrow and terror.

Photo: Eva.W

Sometimes I put my camera down.

It’s not the first time we meet. A powerful creature, who usually strikes respect and fear. Aware of my steps, I come closer and we make contact. An animal who doesn’t know closeness, doomed to his mechanical, dreary existence, where the only stimuli are food, defecation and insemination. His “freedom” zone is limited by a few meters of chain, with no other choice available. I wonder – what do we take into consideration while deciding on how to constrain their lives? Does this 500+kg mass, so indifferent, sentenced for life for a “good cause”, giving life to the next victims of dairy industry, is even privileged to feel something?

Or should I just give up on my empathetic reflections right now and leave?…

When he breathes, puts his head on my shoulder or when I simply look into his eyes I realise all over again, we don’t have any right to make them our slaves. You hear me right. He’s not a dangerous, aggressive bull whose negative image we’ve created over decades. It’s six hundred kilograms of meat who has feelings, thoughts and who needs the closeness of humans, who objectified and enslaved him. Dear bull, I stand straight in front of you, eye to eye, without any fear. All I feel is the immensity of your sorrow and terror.

I’m sorry.

I took a picture of you, but we also had our picture taken together, to remember this moment. Your time is running up.

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