The beloved children’s book “Click”, said the camera., first published in 1997, is available again. It features animal portraits by photographer Balthasar Burkhard, who started the series in 1995.

The twenty animals meet for the photographer’s beauty contest. On Burkhard’s portraits all the animals are equally beautiful. The protagonist of the story is a shy donkey watching the cheerful activity. Markus Jakob describes the illustrious rendezvous with kind and humorous words.

Balthasar Burkhard (1944–2010) was a Swiss photographer well-known for his large-format black-and-white photography.
Markus Jakob (born 1954) writes features, reports, and miscellanea for various media.

Taking footage from an unsecured surveillance camera in a horse stable, Joseph Moore extracts black and white frames of a mother horse giving birth to a foal. Presented with no timestamps, the stable becomes more claustrophobic with every frame, as Labor raises questions about animal captivity and surveillance.

With remarkable intimacy and dignity, Miyazaki Tsuyoshi portrays cats in her neighbourhood. Rather than a collection of cute cat pictures, Cat Catcher in the Rye meets its subjects at eye-level, at times giving the illusion that wanted their lives documented.

I take photographs of cats because I love them.
But the fate of a stray or abandoned cat is a grim one.
No matter how exquisite the light
It is this thought that looms when I look at them.
So I find the cats around me that need help
and then I take the photographs.

― Statement from the artist

"Afterword" is composed of photos used in the afterword 'Sasuke's Diary' from Sasuke, My Dear Cat, published by Seinen Shokan in 1978. In the small pocket-sized printing manuscript were instructions and numbering written by Fukase himself.

Sasuke the First went missing quite early on, but some time afterwards, someone who had seen the ‘missing’ posters delivered a kitten to Fukase thinking it was probably Sasuke. While they did indeed look alike, the kitten turned out not to be Sasuke after all.

Fukase, however, named this kitten Sasuke and ended up loving him like his own. To Harajuku, on express trains, and even to Ueno Zoo and the seaside - he took Sasuke out with him wherever he went. Referring to himself ‘papa’ while turning his camera upon Sasuke, the depth of Fukase’s affection for his cat can be felt through his photos of its charming visage.

To what extent can we trust photography and science? Robert Zhao Renhui explores these questions in A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World, which appears to be an authentic catalogue of plants and animals but is in fact entirely fictitious.

Renhui’s guide ostensibly “documents” 55 different animals, plants and environments that have been manipulated by man but do not appear to be, and examines the myriad ways in which humans are altering nature. Here are curious creatures that have evolved in often unexpected ways to cope with our changing world, including rhinoceroses with barely visible horns and monkeys dependent on food handed out by humans. Other organisms in the series are the products of human intervention, mutations engineered to serve various purposes from scientific research to the desire for ornamentation, such as man-made gelatin grapes, genetically modified tomatoes and “unbreakable” eggs.

All living things constantly adapt to the various pressures they face including predators, pollution and environmental change. Yet the human species has undeniably emerged as the main perpetrator of the dangers that threaten the survival of other life forms. A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World reminds us of this fact, and above all to retain a critical, cautious and ironic attitude to the “real.”

Anima features the caisson horses of Arlington National Cemetery in the United States. This is the national burial ground where U.S. service members are buried, and is located outside the country’s capital city of Washington, D.C.
These animals are among the few left to perform a duty for mankind that dates back centuries. No longer used in warfare as such, they now have the sole and exclusive privelege of accompanying soldiers to their final resting place.
Dumas photographed these horses when their working day was done, as they were falling asleep in front of her eyes and camera. The horses not only convey their vulnerability at rest, but also reflect a falling, the losing of consciousness. Dumas: “As I spent time with them at night I felt this was maybe one of the most intimate and private moments to witness: the gap between wakefulness and slumber, a space for dreaming and reverie.”

Lous Martens about the book: "Seventeen years ago our grandson Jaap was born. That was the start of an animal book for Jaap. I used a dummy for the OASE journal of architecture and loosely pasted in pictures of animals that I had clipped from newspapers and magazines about art, literature and science. Plus stamps and photos from advertising brochures. Then Zeno was born and the same thing happened: an animal book for Zeno. Now I was working on two books at once. Then came Anna. Julian. Luca. At this point, there were five books-in-the-making on the table. And none of those five are finished yet. The children, as well as myself, enjoy seeing the small, ever-evolving changes. The additions. These books were never intended for the outside world where I had found all the pictures. Never intended to be published. Now they lie here, grouped into one big book, because others have convinced me it's what they deserve."

For years Daniel Naudé has traversed South Africa’s countryside recording his travels as a way of understanding South Africa and its complexities. Among his most arresting subjects are animals, and the collection of images in this book is as beautiful as it is intriguing. The penetrating stare of a feral Africanis dog; the regal dignity of enormous horned cattle; farmers bottle-feeding a lamb, clutching a young donkey, or stolidly leading their goats to pasture—all are photographed against the backdrop of South Africa’s rolling hills, grasslands, and seashore. As Naudé’s muted colors contrast with the animals’ stark silhouettes, viewers are compelled to share his intrepid curiosity about the nature of human dominion over animals, and about how the histories of all living things are intertwined and indivisible.

In "Animal Greetings from the UK", all images have been collected and extracted by Alberto Vieceli from eighty vintage postcards from the United Kingdom. This kind of postcards, that were in use between the 40s and 60s, were in the middle of the postcard cards always decorated with animal photos, mostly cats and dogs.

Animal Imago is Nimcova's fourth publication, this time around, departing from social and documentary topics, finding herself publishing a book for kids of all ages. The book is dealing with our relationship with animals and nature around us. "In essence, it speaks to the idea that the reality of the world around us is never a given, it is something we have to create".

Our relationship with animals is fraught and contradictory: we simultaneously mythologize, venerate, sacrifice, and exploit those who are not of our species. This paradox suggests that our connection with animals might be more complicated, and far richer, than commonly thought, and that the distinction between human and animal is not at all clear-cut. By laying down a novel artistic and theoretical framework, Animality, devised by Jens Hoffmann in conjunction with Marian Goodman Gallery, looks to examine this complex relationship. Written to accompany an exhibition of the same name, it includes more than seventy participants, mostly from the world of art, but also covering film, literature, philosophy, and science.

Sage Sohier grew up with four dogs, and currently lives with three. Animals have always been important in her life; so, when she started photographing people in the late 1970s, she often included their companion animals.

“There is more spontaneity, less self-consciousness, and more chaos when humans and other animals coexist. Love is unconditional, grief is uncomplicated though deeply felt, and life is richer, more vivid, more comical.”

Roaming the natural and urban world with a camera for over 16 years, often alone, on foot, keeping a low profile, Ed Panar has repeatedly been caught in the act of photography—not by other people, but by a random assortment of familiar animals: cows, cats, frogs, dogs, turtles, deer, geese…you name it. The animal sees Ed, and Ed sees the animal; an unspoken communication passes between them. If he’s lucky, the moment is captured on film, catalogued, tagged for future reference. In Animals That Saw Me: Volume One Panar brings together the first collection of his most surprising and unexpected encounters with ordinary fauna—a brief, deadpan field study of the uncanny moment of recognition between species. What exactly have the animals seen? The pictures are a reminder that we must appear as strange and exotic to them as they do to us.

Animals That Saw Me: Volume Two pairs a new collection of photographs from the observational wanderings of Ed Panar with an original essay on “being seen” by speculative realist philosopher Timothy Morton. Extending the project Panar began in 2011 with Animals That Saw Me: Volume One, this ‘sequel’ draws from recent work and newly discovered gems from his vast back catalogue to depict a series of brief, shared encounters with various (non-human) species — mammal, reptile, bird, insect — as they seem to behold the (human) photographer. Edited for the viewer’s maximum delight, the pictures embody a whimsical concept with surprisingly complex ramifications under the surface. Why do we distinguish between “us” and “them,” and what exists in the space between these distinctions? What does it mean to make “eye contact” with another species? What does the presence of a camera add to this phenomenon? Channeling the thoughtful humor, wonder and peculiar engagement with the world that made Panar’s first volume an instant hit, this volume revisits and digs deeper into the question: “Why do we assume that it’s only us who does the looking?”

Since 2015 Charlotte Dumas has studied the Japanese island of Yonaguni and the critically-endangered breed of native horses that roam freely across it. A tragic part of the island’s past comes through in her characteristically intimate films and photos. In round glass objects, ballet shoes, or a horse’s girth cloth, a special blue colour recurs to link Japanese nature, the island’s horses, and three young girls, whose spirited independence brings a new energy to Yonaguni.