ARK | By Can Shengli
“They don’t have the pet status of cats and dogs; they are just food in the human mouth. On their final journey, they are as numb or suffering as refugees, like the cages of Salvador City under the lens of photographer Giles Clarke.”
– Can Shengli
What does a delicious fried chicken grilled pork chop on the table have to do with a big truck on the highway? Through the transport of livestock and poultry vehicles, we make a journey about life. They don’t have the pet status of cats and dogs; they are just food in the human mouth. On their final journey, they are as numb or suffering as refugees, like the Cages of Salvador City under the lens of photographer Giles Clarke.
At this point, our heart will ring a voice: To be kind to every life is to be kind to ourselves.
Almost every summer, my family and I go to the seaside for vacation, and in the nearly four hours of driving on the highway, we often encounter vehicles transporting poultry and livestock because the speed is so fast that it is basically impossible to shoot. One day in August 2021, fog blocked the highway, and two such trucks were not far from me. And I had the privilege of shooting this group of works up close.
This set of works is mainly shot with a telephoto lens, and later on, ACR is used for distortion correction, and Polarr Photo Editor and TuYiShe filter are used for color matching.
I named this series “Ark,” which is actually a satire because the original intention of the ark is to save;
I hope everyone can learn to cherish and respect life from another perspective.
The series has not been published since it was completed, and I was delighted to have made its first appearance in Lens Magazine.
“I named this series “Ark,” which is actually a satire because the original intention of the ark is to save;
I hope everyone can learn to cherish and respect life from another perspective.”
– Can Shengli
Can Shengli
Can Shengli, born in 1974 in Henan Province, China, has been engaged in photography for more than 20 years. He used to be an Internet media reporter, a serial entrepreneur, and co-founder of TuYiShe, an original Chinese photography filter brand. He has participated in the editing of best-selling photography books, and his work has been exhibited in Beijing and national exhibitions.
While death is an inevitable part of all animals’ lives, slaughter doesn’t need to be—especially at the nauseating scale that intensive industrial agriculture demands.
The numbers alone paint a grim portrait. Every day, people slaughter an incomprehensible number of chickens, turkeys, rabbits, sheep, goats, and cows for food. According to one estimate,
200 million land animals are slaughtered around the world every single day.
That’s 72 billion a year.
▶ In the United States alone, roughly 25 million animals are slaughtered every single day.
▶ An average slaughterhouse kills up to 1,100 pigs every single hour.
▶ Globally, animal slaughter numbers have only increased since the 1960s.
