Скачать или смотреть The Photographer Who Stayed | Documentary Photo Book on Camp Beagle - embedded in a protest camp

Hi, I’m Tímea Kovács (Timi) and this is my documentary photography project about life inside Camp Beagle – the longest-running animal rights protest camp in history. I was basically curious myself how living life in a protest camp is, along the road in the middle of nowhere – so I went there and documented everything. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the weird. I said “every aspect of life” when people asked why I was photographing while they were washing dishes, shopping in Tesco, or the portaloo being cleaned.

The tents of Camp Beagle are outside a beagle breeding facility – the activists are campaigning for the closure of this dog breeder (MBR Acres) who sells the beagle dogs to laboratories doing animal experiments.

In 2024–2025, I travelled several times from the Netherlands, where I currently live, to the UK together with my dog Boris (a Chihuahua–Miniature Pinscher mix boy of 14 years old). We stayed at Camp Beagle — and we weren’t just observers. We lived in the camp and became part of the community. I joined protests, cooked meals, cleaned, hung banners, ran information stalls, created videos for social media — and took photos every single day. In photography terms, it is called being an “embedded photographer.” I knew I wanted to take different photos than what I normally see in newspapers. I, myself, like personal photographs and seeing the environment where people live. I knew I needed to stay in order to capture the type of images I had in mind.

I grew up in Hungary, and as a teenager I saw a video about animal experiments and, more importantly, about animal liberation that was burned into my memory. That image never left me, and it became the spark for this long-term documentary photo project. I’m also a dog lover, vegan, and animal rights advocate. When I heard about Camp Beagle and figured that it’s related to that video footage I saw as a teenager – they had my total undivided attention. I wanted to make a photo book of their life.

I took around 10,000 photographs, which is way more than expected. It became a task on its own to manage this archive, and imagine how hard it is to select only 150 photos from it for my book! I dare to hope, that someone in the future will find this photo book and have a tiny glimpse of who the people were that were already fighting for the animals in our era.

#PhotoBook #DocumentaryPhotography #protestcamp #HungarianPhotographer #DutchPhotographer #DocumentaryPhotographer #ActivistPhotography #AnimalRightsPhotography

CHAPTERS
0:00 Documentary Photo Book
1:07 Hungary
4:51 Netherlands
9:33 England
14:12 Dogs inside MBR Acres
17:15 Descartes
18:08 Interfauna - MBR puzzle
20:59 Welcome to my Camp
26:41 Photography approach
32:21 Liberation actions
38:11 Camp Beagle campaign
42:30 Thank You!