Zoos
Koala. Scotland, 2009. © Craig Redmond
This series explores the unnatural captivity of wild animals in zoos - ‘False Environments’ where the paintings of trees, rocks and other landscapes may fool the viewing public but do nothing to benefit the lives of animals who will never experience freedom.
“I look at the concrete walls, the glassed-in spaces, the moats, the electrified fences. I see the expressions on the animals’ faces, so different from the expressions of the wild animals I’ve seen. The central conceit of the zoo, and in fact the central conceit of this whole culture, is that all of these ‘others’ have been placed here for us, that they do not have any existence independent of us, that the fish in the oceans are waiting there for us to catch them, that the trees in the forests stand ready for us to cut them down, that the animals in the zoo are there for us to be entertained by them.”
Derrick Jensen, environmentalist and author of Thought To Exist In The Wild: Awakening From The Nightmare Of Zoos
- Filename
- False-Environments-2.jpg
- Copyright
- © Craig Redmond
- Image Size
- 3648x2736 / 1.9MB
- Contained in galleries
- False Environments

