How do we teach children about animals, really?
While animals are often much-loved characters in children’s cartoons, books and films, they’re also a part of our food source. This paradoxical ‘love,’ both selective and contradictory, is not a new phenomenon, but one which only gains in absurdity together with the industrialization of food production.
As our populations move towards globalization and urbanization, there is increasingly a deep chasm between people and their food source. An animal becomes less of a living, breathing being and more a sanitized, shaped, and packaged object. The friendly, happy animals presented in our books have seemingly no relationship to our hamburgers and hotdogs.
In Katherine Oktober Matthew’s brand new photobook I ♥ Animals, she uses biting humor to audaciously strip away the veneer of civilization. In the playful format of a children’s board book, mimicking the feeling of a happy tale to read at bedtime, I ♥ Animals is sure to get under your skin.
BOOK PUBLICATION INFORMATION
Board book
12 pages
8 full color images
6.5 x 6.5 inches (16.5 x 16.5 cm)
Publication Date: May 30, 2017
Edition: 500 books
€ 15
You can order the book here.
Katherine Oktober Matthews is an American artist based in Amsterdam. She is the Chief Editor of GUP Magazine. For the John Adams Institute she interviews upcoming speakers. See more of her work at oktobernight.com.