The Farm Family

With his project for the newly constructed Animal Services Building, photographer Rob MacInnis has taken a traditional form of art and given it a new perspective. The piece, entitled The Farm Family, depicts dozens of farm animals— cattle, horses, sheep, hogs, goats, and dogs, all from farms that the artist visited on Prince Edward Island— lined up in front of farm buildings, as if posing for a traditional formal portrait. The completed work is very large, spanning a length of nine metres and a height reaching over a metre tall. Of course, in reality, the animals would not be so cooperative as to stand and pose for the camera all at once, so each animal was individually photographed and digitally collaged into one image.

The Farm Family is part of a larger series of work, featuring individual animal portraiture and group portraits. The style of the photographs are meant to evoke contemporary fashion spreads, such as those by Annie Leibowitz and David LaChapelle. And, like fashion photography, the models are at once elevated to be ideal images of beauty, while they are also debased as objects. The intent of the artist is to have us question the role that animals play in our society: can we imagine them not as workers or food, but as individuals equal to ourselves? Portraiture is inherently about showing the personality of the subject — are we willing to grant animals the same self-expression? What does it mean to capture them in this way?

As artwork in the Animal Care & Control Centre, where stray animals are housed and treated, The Farm Family will be a reminder of how important animals are in our lives, and how each animal is worthy of respect.