This series sets out to depict the dualities of mortality, without apology and regardless of taboo. Since the beginning of production, I was granted complete access by the slaughterhouse to investigate and shoot what I saw and heard. To unveil the layers of dialogue, curiosity and confusion embedded in the rhythms of life and death. In 2011, three years after my first shoot and still very much involved in the project, I returned to Oaxaca to take the work step further.
At the second installation of shoots, I spent ten days photographing nudes inside the slaughterhouse. Nudes with the pigs and the skins. With the drying hooks and the dark, stained walls. And in keeping with the project’s intention to reconcile with my own experiences of death, I stepped out from behind the camera, joined the tribe of models, and offered my own nude body to some of the photographs.
Ten days is a long time to be in a slaughterhouse. Day after day after day we listened to the unmistakable and unforgettable sounds of dying. We studied the rhythms of slaughterhouse workers for whom this relationship with death is diurnal. One day the local crew whistled at us from beyond the brick wall. They couldn’t see us, but they knew what we were doing: willingly drifting into a graveyard, still fresh with blood while fully nude and vulnerable.
The intent for the second shoot was to create a collision: this rarely revealed environment filled with death and execution interacting with the living, sensual, and strongly emotional human. The flesh for consumption with the flesh of the consumer. With "For Consumption Only" I am exploring and exposing the most fundamental verities of our existence, and showing what in our deepest bones we all know. There is beauty in death.”
Any hints for those starting out on how to make a living?
If you have a skill (photography, writing, etc) I think it is best to find those that need that skill in any way. I detached from the idea of making money at my "art" This was a great freedom. I am able to make money with my camera and then fund my own ideas. My advice is to not get attached to making money at your art but rather use your skill as a practical business tool and then if you make money at your art - it is on your terms.
You will find more from Alexandra Gibson at: http://alexandragibsonphotography.com/