Essay: See As No Other - Blind Photography

Abstract
This essay is an exploration of the lived experiences of blind photographers – how they experience their environments and how they use photography to navigate them. It is written by a non-blind photographer. Blind photography might seem a contradiction in terms to the non-blind, but is it? Historically, blind people have experienced a great deal of prejudice and their disability has been commonly misunderstood. Since many blind photographers are capturing images each and every day it became important to speak to them personally about their individual work and opinions about the medium. To set in context their words and experiences, misconceptions about what it factually means to be registered blind – which is not always seeing nothing – are corrected before a short history of the British society’s treatment of blind people is considered. Since camera work is the focus, we take the acclaimed words about photography of Susan Sontag, marry them with the accomplished thinking of art critic, John Berger, and lay them down in the philosophical enquiry of environmental anthropologist, Tim Ingold.
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Image © Pete Ekert 2011

Essay: Animal 2.0

Abstract
The Internet has provided people with a new way to view animals, but how does our online activity compare to our offline viewing and do we witness a greater abundance of animal videos now than we have ever done historically? Is online content more or less factual than what has gone before? Experts have questioned whether the ethics of some traditional wildlife filmmakers are any better than the producers of animal videos shared online by amateurs, but the key consideration is how do we – if we can at all, censor and control animal footage? How does a digital audience react to animal footage and what draws the largest number of viewers? Evidence from YouTube suggests that the number of viewers does not equate to popularity and approval. Insight from cyborg anthropology and results from digital ethnography are presented to maximise our understanding of the phenomenal impact of the Internet on a global community before introducing some animal video case studies and the reaction to them.
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Essay: These Modern Dogs

Today's blog posts are the essays I've written, in full, for the Postgraduate Certificate in Anthrozoology that I completed this year (hence the blog has been a little quiet!). They're aimed at a wider audience and I hope you enjoy them. Animal 2.0 is my strongest work, if you choose to read only one, and See Like No Other sits slightly outside the animal arena, but firmly inside the visual arena with a survey on blind photographers and their interactions with the Environment. All the essays are also now available on www.nataliegilbert.net.

Abstract
The theme for this essay is animal domestication and more specifically, dogs. Two proposed theories for the evolution of domestication are put forward: Control, whereby humans manipulate dogs for domestication, and Contract, where dogs willingly choose to be domesticated. Each argument is expressed as an indication of how we might have formed the modern relationship we now have with dogs - if you like, a post-domesticated plateau. To explicitly express this modern relationship there is deconstruction of a television advert that aired in the UK in 2010. The ad features a rescue dog called Harvey who uses a television advert to 'sell' his services to potential new owners. Harvey won the advertisers an 'Ad of the Year' competition and has become incredibly popular, but how does this media make-believe, so absorbed by the general public, compare to our reality? People might frequently say they want a Harvey, but the statistics on dog abandonment suggest otherwise. When are we going to re-address our intentions?
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