A group of chimps watch silently as a loved one is wheeled away to her burial. This is such a moving photograph.
On September 23, 2008, Dorothy, a female chimpanzee in her late 40s, died of congestive heart failure. A maternal and beloved figure, Dorothy had spent eight years at Cameroon’s Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, which houses and rehabilitates chimps victimized by habitat loss and the illegal African bushmeat trade.
After a hunter killed her mother, Dorothy was sold as a “mascot” to an amusement park in Cameroon. For the next 25 years she was tethered to the ground by a chain around her neck, taunted, teased, and taught to drink beer and smoke cigarettes for sport. In May 2000 Dorothy—obese from poor diet and lack of exercise—was rescued and relocated along with ten other primates. As her health improved, her deep kindness surfaced. She mothered an orphaned chimp named Bouboule and became a close friend to many others, including Jacky, the group’s alpha male, and Nama, another amusement-park refugee.
Szczupider, who had been a volunteer at the center, told me: “Her presence, and loss, was palpable, and resonated throughout the group. The management at Sanaga-Yong opted to let Dorothy’s chimpanzee family witness her burial, so that perhaps they would understand, in their own capacity, that Dorothy would not return. Some chimps displayed aggression while others barked in frustration. But perhaps the most stunning reaction was a recurring, almost tangible silence. If one knows chimpanzees, then one knows that [they] are not [usually] silent creatures.”
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft, brown earth with the grasses waving above one’s head and listen to silence; to have no yesterday and no tomorrow; to forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
when you see gore, how long do you look at it? quick peeks, ie just enough to see what it is; long glances to really see what its about; or some other way entirely?
Anonymous
It depends. There are some things that are commonplace to me now, such as suicides by gunshot or hanging, car accidents, and decapitations by Mexican drug cartels. Other times, I’m really compelled with the story behind the image or the fascinating way the body was destroyed.
When I see death, I see something that is both beautiful and ugly at the same time. I look at it with interest and respect and, as the repeated caption implies, I absorb them as cautionary tales and motivation to keep living my life to the fullest.
Is there another way to live? Because it’s the only way to die.
“
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Slipknot, “Disasterpiece”
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“Hundreds of thousands of baby male chicks are either ground up alive or discarded like trash to die more slowly, piled by the hundreds, even thousands, on top of one another in bins every single day in order to satiate the egg and chicken-meat industry.
“The majority of male chicks are basically useless to both industries, so they are considered to be ‘trash’. I can not tell you how hard I’ve cried watching documentary video of countless live baby chicks, freezing to death in garbage bins out in the winter cold. So, which is the more brutal scenario? Is there a more brutal scenario?”
— Anthony Damiano
“Purgatory”, as depicted in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.
Possibly the best example of French Gothic manuscript illumination surviving to the present day. The Très Riches Heures is a book of prayers to be said at canonical hours created for Duke Jean de Berry by the Limbourg brothers between 1412–1416. The book was completed by an intermediate painter and later Jean Colombe between 1485-1489. The codex consists of 206 vellum leaves that are 30 cm in height by 21.5 cm in width. The manuscript has changed hands many times and currently resides in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.
![A group of chimps watch silently as a loved one is wheeled away to her burial. This is such a moving photograph.
On September 23, 2008, Dorothy, a female chimpanzee in her late 40s, died of congestive heart failure. A maternal and beloved figure, Dorothy had spent eight years at Cameroon’s Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, which houses and rehabilitates chimps victimized by habitat loss and the illegal African bushmeat trade.
After a hunter killed her mother, Dorothy was sold as a “mascot” to an amusement park in Cameroon. For the next 25 years she was tethered to the ground by a chain around her neck, taunted, teased, and taught to drink beer and smoke cigarettes for sport. In May 2000 Dorothy—obese from poor diet and lack of exercise—was rescued and relocated along with ten other primates. As her health improved, her deep kindness surfaced. She mothered an orphaned chimp named Bouboule and became a close friend to many others, including Jacky, the group’s alpha male, and Nama, another amusement-park refugee.
Szczupider, who had been a volunteer at the center, told me: “Her presence, and loss, was palpable, and resonated throughout the group. The management at Sanaga-Yong opted to let Dorothy’s chimpanzee family witness her burial, so that perhaps they would understand, in their own capacity, that Dorothy would not return. Some chimps displayed aggression while others barked in frustration. But perhaps the most stunning reaction was a recurring, almost tangible silence. If one knows chimpanzees, then one knows that [they] are not [usually] silent creatures.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4x24jvDMF1qb53jco1_500.jpg)
