Janet Holmes is a Toronto-based photographer who is a talented and passionate advocate for her subject, rescued farm animals. I “met” Janet several years ago in a class we both took with Laura Valenti. Despite the vast differences in artistic style and subject matter, we rapidly found common ground and became friends (and fans! ) of each other and our respective works. It would be about two more years before we would finally meet face-to-face - at Medium Portfolio Review in San Diego in 2018.

I was awed by Janet over the internet, and even more so in person. Janet shines at the things I feel I am very awkward about…talking to strangers about her work in gallery settings, organizing information well, the one minute elevator speech, doing a thousand things at once and making it seem easy…I’m not sure why she puts up with me, but she does.

Janet has a photo book coming out this September, called “Nest.” I’ve interviewed her here about her work in general as well as the upcoming book. I hope you enjoy this discussion as much as I did.

DNJ: Can you tell me a little bit about your upbringing and background?

JH: I was born in 1964 and grew up on the West coast of British Columbia, in small towns and then in Vancouver. 

My first memories are of my parents and grandmother reading to me and as I grew up, I read everything, avidly, as often as I could. There were universes to explore in books, and I often retreated there because I didn’t see well. I have very limited depth perception, so I was a disaster when it came to sports and the kinds of outdoor activities you’re expected to pursue in BC, like skiing and mountain-climbing.  

I’ve always loved animals. I was that kid who wrecked her dress crawling under a truck to say hello to a snake and I spent hours by the pond watching frogs. At home, our animal companions included dogs, cats, gerbils, and guinea pigs, and I spent many summer weekends volunteering at the horse shows where my sister competed.

I remember a lot of laughter in my home as I grew up. My engineer father often seemed somber but was exceptionally whimsical and curious. My grandmother, who had suffered significant trauma in her life and was battling cancer all the time she lived with us, preferred to tell funny stories about growing up in a remote corner of Northern Québec. My older sister talked her way out of trouble by paralyzing the adults with laughter. And my warm and caring mother, a nurse, surprised people with her dry humor.

I studied history and English at universities in BC before moving to Toronto in my early twenties. I graduated from law school in 1991 and then completed a master’s degree in Securities Law in 1998. I’ve worked as a lawyer at law firms in Toronto and New York City, for financial sector regulators in Canada and the UK, for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Paris), and for a multinational company headquartered in New York City.

DNJ: What brought you to photography?

JH: Photography and helping non-human animals are intertwined for me. For many years I was afraid to get involved with animal rescue because I didn’t think I could handle the heartbreak that often goes with it. I was almost fifty when I finally acknowledged that animals needed me more than I needed to be comfortable, and so I started taking caring of pigeons and other wildlife at the Wild Bird Fund in New York City. 

This volunteer work coincided with my growing interest in photography. I started studying photography in 2013, and it felt natural (and inevitable) to focus on animals in my coursework. Soon afterward, I began volunteering with the Wild Bird Fund and other rescue groups, like Mighty Mutts in New York City and Catskill Animal Sanctuary in Saugerties NY, as a photographer. 

As I spent more time experiencing animals as a photographer and a caregiver, I began to question how I could profess to love them yet continue to exploit them for food and clothing. I committed to become vegan and use photography to advocate for animal liberation.

DNJ: Who are you? How do you characterize yourself as an artist? How do you use your voice in your imagery?

JH: Art and advocacy are inseparable for me. Ultimately, I want to do my part to change society’s perception and treatment of farmed animals. We need to challenge ourselves and the systems that normalize the use of animals. I hope that the images I create help people experience farmed animals as individuals – individuals who think and feel in ways that aren’t that different from the way humans and their companion animals think and feel.

Having grown up in a family that laughed together, it’s natural for me to see and express warmth and humor in my portraits and the way I write about photography in social media. I use that humor to reach people who might be turned off by graphic imagery of animal neglect and abuse. My portraits of Dualla looking at her reflection in the washing machine or of Cluckey investigating the contents of the refrigerator might help people see farmed animals differently. And that might make them more open to learning about how farmed animals are exploited. That knowledge, in turn might cause them to reflect on the choices they make and whether their choices about what to eat and wear are aligned with their values.

DNJ: I’ve known you for a few years now and have always been impressed with your ability to just gracefully “handle it all” and, seemingly, with great ease. Yet, you work full-time as a lawyer, are married, have a blossoming practice in photography, and have this book about to come out. What kind of challenges does that present, and how do you balance it?

JH: It doesn’t feel easy to me! There are tumbleweed-sized blobs of cat hair rolling around the house right now and I can’t remember the last time I did laundry. 

Seriously, though, I try to achieve balance by focusing on a few important projects and letting the rest slide. Right now, for example, I’m focused on this book and my day job. I don’t have the energy to create new work and the sanctuaries, shelters and homes where I make portraits are closed to visitors like me anyway.

I experience a lot of joy in my law practice, at home, and when I’m making photographs and that makes it much easier to juggle everything. I’ve been fortunate in my legal career to be surrounded by good people who want their colleagues to succeed and who want to help the people they serve, and that makes it much easier to work long hours. At home, my husband is incredibly supportive. Not only does he bring me coffee in bed every day (pursuant to one of his wedding vows), he drives me to photo sessions and joins them as an assistant or second photographer, bakes me vegan cookies, troubleshoots my technology, and edits what I write. And finally, the community I’ve found among animal rescuers and caregivers has encouraged me, schooled me and motivated me to do this work – because it makes a difference for them, for the animals in their care, and the other animals who haven’t been rescued yet. 

DNJ: My own work is very deeply personal. It seems like my artistic practice helps me to make sense of the events and influences in my life. Where does photography fit for you within your world?

JH: Photography has completely changed the trajectory of my life. Experiencing animals (and being experienced by animals) as I photographed them is what made me realize that I had to align my beliefs with my actions. I remember my first visit to Catskill Animal Sanctuary in 2014, where I met Daisy the turkey. She had been bred to grow quickly and then be killed at a few months’ old. Rescued from a turkey farm, she had grown into a massive and ungainly but still beautiful creature. I photographed her standing beside a sign on the grounds that said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” And when I looked at that photograph on my camera at the end of the day I knew what I had to do: go vegan for the animals, and use photographs and words to help people see what I was learning.

The action of making photographs is about being with animals on their terms. I slow down, and often sit down, and hope that they will be interested in spending time with me. We look at each other and I invite them to experience me through smell, sound, touch and even taste before and during our photo sessions.

In my photographic process, I do my best not to objectify or exploit the animal. Although an animal can’t “consent” to be photographed in the way a human can, I do pay attention to their behavior and avoid photographing animals (or stop a session) if the animal doesn’t seem to want to participate. 

If I’m lucky, I get to meet animals in spaces that are sanctuaries, where their environments are designed to make them feel safe, loved and fulfilled. These are also teaching spaces, where I learn from the animals and their caregivers how to be with them in a way that is respectful and mindful of others’ needs and rights.

DNJ: What is your overarching vision for your work in general?

JH: I hope that the images I share with people give them a sense of the sanctuary that I’ve experienced. The photographs are an invitation to re-imagine their world as one where animals are here with us, not for us.

DNJ: What causes you to look at an image and decide, “I’m ready - no, IT’S ready -for it to be seen by the world”?

JH: When I photograph animals, I’m often in environments where I don’t have much control over the light, scene, behavior and time as I’d like to have. I might be in a dark barn, a makeshift rescue center for earthquake victims, or a muddy field with a very large and enthusiastic pig running toward me. Rescuers might be too busy taking care of the animals in their care to help me set up a photo session. And, as I mentioned above, I don’t see well. That’s a long-winded way of saying that I take a lot of photographs to generate raw material that shows promise.

The photographs that make me say “This one is ready to be seen by the world” express something about a non-human animal’s distinct personality that humans will recognize in themselves. They will see curiosity, weariness, affection, contentment, confidence, friendliness, resilience, or exhilaration. And they’ll ask themselves, “What does Asa see when she looks in the mirror?” And the viewer will remember Asa as an individual.

DNJ: As I recall, you started out doing portraiture of sanctuary/rescue animals, then moved to this work, where you include people as part of the portraits. What brought about that evolution?

JH: In 2017, I was volunteering as a caregiver at the Wild Bird Fund in New York City, where I met a hen suffering severe and chronic reproductive illness. I learned that her ailments were common for modern hens, whose bodies break down under the strain of laying hundreds of large eggs each year. (Their wild ancestors laid only 12-20 eggs once a year.) 

When she was no longer acutely ill, the hen needed a sanctuary or private home where someone could pay for her regular (and expensive) veterinary care. I began contacting my friends at farm animal sanctuaries and they introduced me to a network of people who rescue and care for chickens in their homes.

I thought about how we have been taught that the exploitation of hens' reproductive systems is normal and also how in many places, society restricts the reproductive rights of humans with wombs. These parallels inspired me to make portraits of hens and the people who rescue them to honor the bonds between them. 

Over time, the project broadened in scope to include roosters as well as hens rescued from many different environments, including factory farms, backyard chicken coops, feedstores, streets, parks, boatyards, school hatching projects, cockfighting rings, and religious sacrifice rituals.

DNJ: Tell me about this book project, entitled “Nest.” What led up to it? When did you know you “needed” to make a book from your work with the chickens? In your thought, does making it a book change how the viewer understands this series and its meaning? If so, how?

JH: I live and breathe books, so I knew early on that I wanted to present this project in book form. I didn’t want to weigh the book down with text, but I did want to share a little information about the many ways we humans have exploited chickens to satisfy our appetites, appease our gods, and entertain ourselves. 

The book format helped me deal with one of the project’s greatest challenges, which is handling the dichotomy between the joy, beauty, and humor reflected in many of the portraits and the unsettling stories that most of the chickens’ caregivers shared with me. To do justice to these beautiful birds, who have suffered so much, and their human guardians, who have worked so hard, loved so deeply and lost so much, I combined the portraits with short memoirs from five of the rescuers I photographed. Their stories about the exhilaration, grief, kinship, and hope they’ve experienced rescuing and sharing their lives with chickens serve as a counterpoint to the images.  

DNJ: Are there any artists that influenced you and how you worked as you started to do this kind of photography (with the animals)? If so, who, and how did their work influence what you did?

JH: Long before I started experimenting with photography, I found a book of (animal) portraits made by Walter Schels. I loved how his studio-like portraits of sheep, chickens, rabbits and other animals were simultaneously dignified and playful. Early in my photographic practice, Mary Shannon Johnstone’s series Landfill Dogs was very influential because she combines images full of joy and freedom without shying away from the tragedy that literally lies beneath the surface of the dogs’ playground. Martin Usborne’s project on Spanish hunting dogs also affected me. He photographed abandoned or abused hunting dogs in rescue centers, and then paired their portraits with images of the landscapes where they had been abandoned, using light and a color palette that imbued the portraits with dignity and melancholy. I appreciate how both Johnstone’s work and Usborne’s work address the suffering that the dogs experienced without looking directly at it. 

DNJ: Without naming any specific photographer or any projects in particular, was there ever a time that you looked at similar work and learned what you did not want to do with yours? If so, what was it you took away from it that made you feel that way?

JH: When I look at other photographs of animals and consider how I’m going to make work, I think about objectification. Of course, we have been educated to consider this when it comes to make photographs of people who are different from us or less privileged, but it also comes up when humans photograph animals. Some photography directly involves exploitation (e.g. photographing animals in zoos or on game farms) and some reinforces the social norms that value animals for how they please or serve humans. I prefer to create images that help people appreciate that animals deserve our respect, protection, and love.

DNJ: Who is the target audience for the book? 

JH: I hope that the book will appeal to people who love animals, are interested in the portrayal of animals in visual culture or are re-considering their relationship with the animals we’ve been socialized to treat as food. I also think the book will interest people who are curious about why we have been taught to think that it’s normal and natural to control and exploit certain bodies (human or non-human).

DNJ: For viewers that are not familiar with the subjects you work with, what do you hope they learn? How about the ones that already are invested in this worldview?

JH: I hope that the book helps people experience farmed animals as individuals – individuals who think and feel in ways that aren’t that different from the way humans and their companion animals think and feel. If my portraits help people see farmed animals differently, they might be more open to learning about how farmed animals are exploited. That knowledge, in turn, might cause them to reflect on the choices they make and whether their choices about what to eat and wear are aligned with their values.

DNJ: How is this time of the pandemic, with its social-distancing and isolation, impacting the work you’re making now? What, if anything, are you doing to work around that?

JH: The sanctuaries, shelters and homes where I make portraits are closed to visitors like me right now. And right now, I’m very focused on finalizing Nest, preparing for the Kickstarter, and working longer hours than usual (remotely) at my day job. So, I’m not making new work right now and, after an incredibly productive and hectic 2019, I’m enjoying this pause.

DNJ: Do you have a favorite image from the book? Do you have a favorite creature amongst the ones you have photographed here?

JH: It’s hard to choose a single image because of the memories associated with each photo session. More than half the chickens I’ve photographed since I started this project have died, so the portraits of those who have passed away are especially meaningful to me.

If I have to pick one image, it would be the portrait of Asa looking at herself in the mirror. It is so clear that she belongs in that room, where the paint, furnishings and coverlet complement her coloring. She is at home. As well, portals, like the mirror in this image, became a recurring element in the project. I wonder if the mirrors invite viewers to reflect on their relationship to farmed animals. And perhaps those viewers will, as I did, step through that portal into a world where animals are truly recognized as being here with us, not for us.

DNJ: Which “story” in the book touched you the most? Why?

JH: Maddie Cartwright’s account of rescuing starving chicks from a frozen, bankrupt farm tore a hole in me. She describes what it was like to choose whom to rescue and whom to abandon because she and the other rescuers only had adoptive homes for several hundred of the thousands and thousands of birds in that barn.

DNJ: Thank you so much, Janet, for this glimpse into you, your work, and the passion that you bring to your subject.

Janet Holmes’ artist bio reads: “I have always loved animals, but for many years I was afraid to get involved with rescuing them because I couldn’t imagine how I would deal with the heartbreak. About six years ago, I decided that animals needed me more than I needed to be comfortable, and so I began volunteering with rescue groups as a caregiver and photographer. As I spent more time experiencing animals as individuals through the lens of my camera, I  began to question how I could profess to love them, yet continue exploiting them for food, clothing and other materials. I committed to become vegan and use photography to advocate animal liberation. I work primarily on a non-profit basis, donating my services and at least 50% of my profits to support animal rescue.” Find out more about her book at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/janetholmesphoto/nest-rescued-chickens-at-home.