Photo Essay

Narrative: During some free time, before I went into work, I was on Facebook. As I was scrolling through the many diverse posts, I saw one titled “How Bacon is Made,” and I decided to watch the video. Pigs in the video were kicked and thrown around and piglets were pulled out of the sows and slammed head first onto the cold concrete ground of their pig pens. To slaughter the pigs, they were hung by their feet (alive!) and sliced all the way down their bellies to then die from vascular shock (extreme blood loss). The video was horrific and gruesome; I could not believe how cruel farm workers were to the animals. This sparked my interest in researching foundations that fought against this cruelty. I found a foundation called “Mercy for Animals” which works to get justice for animals that cannot defend themselves. “Mercy for Animals” does hidden investigations to expose these farm factories that practice animals cruelty. On the site, there were many videos and names of well known farms that were caught doing unspeakable things to the poor animals. I decided to use those farms on the site to show the brutality and to state the names of the brands to get the audience thinking. The animals I have decided to picture are from The Center in Palos Heights. These animals are healthy and thriving in a safe and caring environment. I want to present irony in my pictures to the descriptions underneath to show total opposites of care for farm animals. I want my audience to feel compassion for the animals pictured from The Center and then, they will feel more hateful towards the farms that do not care for their animals. My hope is that my photo essay will persuade my audience to help fight against the abuse and become less blind to the horrors that take place every day.