Animals are animals, a statement that seems so obvious as to merit no attention or further analysis, yet it is constantly contradicted by our behaviour, which tends to attribute human attitudes, thoughts or feelings that are foreign to them to the animals around us, making them something other than what they are, with effects that are at times hilarious, painful, surreal or absurd.
So if they are domesticated, we dress them up, treat them like children, or make them do things that are completely foreign to their nature; if they are wild, we see in them things that are only in our heads.
It is a way of thinking common to all cultures and all historical periods, from totems to all the lions, eagles, wolves or hawks that have become emblems and symbols of this or that; perhaps only farmers, with their narrow utilitarianism, do not indulge in too many flights of fancy about their animals: a pig is a pig, and it is used to make sausages and hams, not to discuss philosophy or morality.
Personally, I have a very domestic cat, who cheers me up with her purrs and her demands for attention and food, but whom I hope and think I treat like a cat, without attributing to her intentions or thoughts that go beyond her feline nature.
In the photographs I present below, I have tried to convey this atmosphere of absurdity in the relationship between humans and animals with a light touch, without overdoing it, using only a few juxtapositions or slightly surreal details.
