Florence Iff | Thinking About Photography

Nature Morte

The loss of biodiversity is mainly due to the destruction of livelihoods by humans, but I can't help but think of all the animals in agriculture, zoos and laboratories that are kept and killed in undignified conditions for human needs. We take for ourselves the right to deprive other living beings of their rights and dignity, let alone grant them these, and we destroy not only their livelihoods, but our own as well.

We have developed technologies to see, understand and modify microorganisms and molecules, and every day we discover previously unknown life in the depths of the sea, the earth and the universe. Like a last gasp just before collapse, we catch a glimpse of the miracle of existence and experience it in shock.

In order to develop this knowledge and the associated technologies, since the Renaissance (mostly Western) scientists have collected vast amounts of "material", i.e. living creatures on all continents, of all populations and species. Animals of all classes were either exhibited in zoos or preserved in some form after dissection, whether in formaldehyde, stuffed or skeletonized for presentation to the general public. Only a very small number are exhibited in showcases, while tens of thousands of them are organized and archived like an invisible mass grave in non-public repositories. Of the visible specimens, we often do not know whether the species still exists or is already extinct.

Even today, wild animals are still hunted as trophies or mutilated to extract their parts as elixirs of life.Livestock are over-bred for our excessive meat consumption, fed hormones and antibiotics and kept in deplorable living conditions; in science, animal testing is still the norm in science, even though alternatives have long been available; and pets and zoo animals are deprived of their social environment and kept in habitats that are far too small and artificial for their species; not to mention fur farms and the known conditions.

Our treatment of animals and other living beings is primarily based on the demands of the human species and our attitude is not geared towards their needs.

My visits to natural history museums and zoos are characterized by ambivalent feelings. On the one hand, I admire man's curiosity and thirst for knowledge, on the other hand, my compassion for the weaker existences, i.e. the other living beings, hovers like a ghostly cloud of destruction in these bizarre and macabre spaces.

Beauty and violence are so close that they are often manifested simultaneously.

These still lifes are a testimony to the human condition and a tribute to all life.

Neither the images nor the text were generated with AI.