Скачать или смотреть Emotional portraits of death row dogs

(4 Jul 2012) This two-month old puppy is having to sit still while a photographer takes his portrait.
But this is not a normal pet portrait.
This puppy has no owner and will not get one. Once this photo shoot is over, the puppy will be taken away by vets to be put down.
The young dog arrived at one of the government-run animal shelters in Taiwan twelve days earlier at the end of April.
According to Taiwanese regulations, the animal's time at the shelter has expired.
In the next couple of hours, the puppy will be given sedatives, and put down.
Tou Chih-kang has been taking photographs of the death row dogs at the Taoyuan Animal Shelter in suburban Taipei for the past two years.
Yun-fei started taking portraits of dogs as a way to highlight the problem of stray dogs in Taiwan. Everyday, around 200 dogs are killed at the government-run shelters. The majority of them are household pets abandoned by owners.
Yun-fei hopes that by showing photographs of these animal moments before they die will make people think twice about abandoning or even buying pets.
The pictures of dogs with a stoic look, or sad eyes, have appeared in local newspapers and magazines.
They're redolent of the kind of formal portraits - of people - that were taken 100 years ago, designed to bestow dignity and prestige upon the subject.
In many of the dog portraits, the animals are placed at angles that make them look almost human.
Yun-fei has recorded the last moments of some 400 canines.
To him, the work is distressing, but important.
"A good image is more than a thousand words, and I believe that some things should not be told, they should be felt, I hope these images will rouse the viewers to contemplate and feel for these unfortunate lives, and understand the inhumanity within society that are putting them through," he says.
This year the Taiwanese authorities will euthanise an estimated 80,000 stray dogs.
Animal-welfare advocates say the relatively widespread nature of the phenomenon - Taiwan's human population is only 23 million - reflects the still immature nature of the island's dog-owning culture and the belief among some of its majority Buddhist population that dogs are reincarnated humans who behaved badly in a previous life.
Activists say that some 70 percent of dogs in Taiwanese shelters are killed after a 12-day waiting period, despite government efforts to find them homes.
Every other week, Yun-fei visits the shelter. He is given a list of dogs that are waiting to be put down that day, and selects dogs that seem friendly to work with.
But the work can be harrowing:
"The first few times were very emotional for me. I would go home and could not sleep for weeks. I would turn all the lights off in my apartment. I would only get up to get some food or to go to the toilet," says Tou.
He says that while some of his friends refuse to even look at his photographs, others say they taught them to take pet ownership more seriously.
The dogs who wind up in Taoyuan are picked up by roving patrols, funded by local governments, of workers equipped with large nets.
Chen Yi-jun, a Councillor in New Taipei City, the largest city on the island, saw Yun-fei's pictures in a magazine and was inspired by the haunting photographs.
As a result she invited Tou Yun-fei to work with her to improve the conditions in the animal shelters.
She is also working to improve the shelter's humane killing method, allowing vets to have budget to use sedatives prior to the lethal injections - an expense that was considered unnecessary before.
A few photos are already on display at Taoyuan city hall.


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