Yana Wernicke’s photographs show the unique company of animals

Can humans and other animals ever truly be companions? Our dogs don’t understand where their food comes from or why we take them to the vet. Our cats don’t know where we go during the day (and vice versa). We have no idea what it would be like to see the world as a cow or a crow. There are abysses of power and misunderstanding.

Yana Wernicke’s work reminds us that compassion can bridge these abysses. Her textless photo book entitled simple companion, revealing the touch of a pig’s ear against a human leg, the firmness of a cow’s abdomen, the sense of coexistence among the trees. We see animals that were bred to be killed, but whose emotional and physical existence has become ingrained in people’s lives.

Wernicke, 32, is influenced by the work of art critic John Berger, who argued that humans had increasingly distanced themselves from other species but longed to connect with them. The photos show Julie and Rosina, two German women, and some of the cows and pigs they rescued from various locations across Germany. The tenderness between the species is so unfamiliar that it almost seems like a magic trick.

“I was really fascinated by this aspect of touching animals and how animals touch each other. Of course we touch people with our hands, but it was interesting to see how a cow touches its back,” says Wernicke. “There’s a lot of leaning and opening up vulnerable areas of the body.”

Saving animals is a commitment, a change in the way we live. But just talking about camaraderie is an act of activism. That was the case when Elliot Katz — aptly named — founded the In Defense of Animals charity in San Francisco in 1983 and campaigned for pets to be called “companion animals” instead.

Katz had trained as a veterinarian at Cornell after nearly being fired for refusing to practice surgeries on live dogs. During the election campaign, he was sometimes content with people who called themselves “pet guards” as a compromise. His point was that animals should not be viewed simply as property, but as sentient beings with needs of their own. If this happened, he believed, fewer would be culled from their “owners” and fewer would be euthanized in shelters.

Katz, who died in 2021, had some success in California, although many animal lovers today prefer to refer to cats and dogs as “parents,” a term that doesn’t fully recognize the animals’ right to autonomy. Legal systems are still struggling with how to deal with subjects who are neither objects nor people.

Creating a society with livestock is a more difficult question. Berger himself romanticized how farmers in the French Alps kept and slaughtered pigs. Most of us living in cities and towns are not used to seeing or touching livestock. We assume that pigs and cows are dirty, brutal and uncomfortable. We don’t want to soil our clothes, expose ourselves to a kick in the ribs that break norms of behavior. Close observation can change this perspective. “I saw so many similarities to my dog,” says Wernicke. “I wanted to show that there isn’t that much of a difference.”

Previously, she had dealt with German colonialism in Cameroon, leading to the collections of dead animals in the archives of German museums. Influenced by the philosopher Vilém Flusser, she also tried to follow animals – donkeys, wolves, cats – in the Italian Alps, to be guided by them and to rewrite her own path.

Even in cities, far away from farms and wolves, we have opportunities for company. When I’m working on the computer at home, my cat often jumps onto the desk and snuggles between my forearms. When I go outside, my eyes often meet those of squirrels and foxes. As different as our experiences may be, we do spend time together — and that act lays the foundation for camaraderie. Sometimes we feel lonely even though we are surrounded by other people. The company of other animals – foxes, frogs, even doves – is an antidote.

companion invites us to draw parallels between our bodies and those of the animals we eat. She asks us why we cannot approach other species. Would it be so out of place holding her skin, soiling our legs in the mud? Yes and also no. We’re not the saviors, Julie and Rosina, but maybe we long to be.

Henry Mance is the Editor-in-Chief of the FT and author of “How to love animals‘. ‘companion‘ is out this month on Loose Joints

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