Guest House

"The zoo to which people go to meet animals, to observe them, to see them, is, in fact, a monument to the impossibility of such encounters." John Berger wrote in his essay "Why look at animals?" I have examinated the living conditions of animals in several German zoos. The special focus on the architectural environment reveals the contradictory relationship between man and animal in artificial surroundings. A zoo is overloaded with ideals of nature and cultural fragments from various parts of the world. The animals in these settings only appear to be extras. Amidst all the props, backdrops and exotic plants the animal itself becomes an object. According to John Berger animals were the first topics depicted by man on cave walls. First treated as prey for one´s own survival, animals have now become decorative objects in zoological gardens of today. Is our present relationship to animals merely a residual echo of the past, a by-product of our history? The photos from the serie "Guest House" reveal the zoo as a heterotopic place: Surrounded by architectural elements of a collective understanding of what the creatures disappeared habitats may have represented, animals are the living metaphors of our longing for a lost paradise. Enric Duch