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In Adrien Tournachon’s photograph of a donkey and Jean-Baptiste Frénet’s image of a horse, each specimen is proudly presented in profile in order to reveal the essential form of the animals. Tournachon’s photograph of “Lafleur” forms part of a series of images of prize-winning livestock at the 1855 agricultural fair in Paris, in which all of the animals were shown with the same background, suspended sheets creating an impromptu out-of-doors studio. In the Frénet image, the horse has moved slightly during the exposure, creating a blurred ghosting of its head as well as the arm of the man, a “mistake” corrected in a variant view.
During the industrial revolution, dependence on domesticated animals shifted: where once the horse, donkey or ox worked alongside man, machines were later to replace them. In this plate from Peter Henry Emerson’s 1888 Pictures of East Anglian Life, a horse and two men work a clay-mill in harmony.
In all three images men stand close to the animals, either restraining them or working together to accomplish a task; metaphorically the men and animals are united, each animal is imbued with value and a sense of heroism. |
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