Nest: Janet Holmes
By Janelle Lynch
April 2020
Published in Nest: Janet Holmes
Kehrer Verlag, Berlin, Germany, 2020
Nadine and Shelley are out for a stroll along a path of fragrant flora. Winnie is just back from her own outing. Valencia Jayne, afoot on fresh linens, is flanked by green curtains that complement her red wattle. Where else should such a radiant creature rest?
The invitation to consider animals as sentient beings has been offered plenty. In my personal library alone, there is The Truro Bear and Other Adventures, Mary Oliver’s poems and essays about the beasts she coveted; Colleen Plumb’s Animals Are Outside Today, fine art photographs that contemplate humans’ impact on other living beings; and John Berger’s Why Look at Animals, an examination of the evolution of our relationship with animals and how they went from muses, to spiritual deities, to captive entertainment. Janet Holmes’ Nest: Rescued Chickens at Home, a book of portraits of chickens and chickens with their caregivers is an inspiring addition.
Penelope, Vanessa, Alicia and Jenny is an environmental portrait of a woman and three chickens in a parquet-floored living room. Adorned with a rocking chair, soft natural light, Buddha statues, and Tibetan singing bowls, the space suggests a sanctuary for all. Josie and Rachel depicts a woman reclining on a white sofa, draped by a big black and white bird and an orange throw. The woman is at rest, eyes closed, while the chicken nestles alert in her arm. The care-taking is reciprocal. That the titles of the pictures give no indication of who the guardian is suggests Holmes’ conception about the animals in relation to their human counterparts, and underscores her intention to ask the viewer to consider our similarities to chickens despite the obvious differences. Knowing Holmes as a devoted activist, I am confident that her request applies to all animals – goats, geese, horses, hogs. And beyond.
Those were, in fact, the subject of Holmes’ images when I met her in Spring 2015 at the International Center of Photography where, following a growing interest in medium, she had been studying since 2014. By then she had already acquired the strong technical foundation and understanding of photography’s visual language that would form the basis of her work as an award-winning animal activist photographer.
A Canadian-born securities lawyer, Holmes was, by day, working for a multinational company headquartered in New York City. Following a lifelong appreciation of animals, it was natural, if not inevitable, for her to focus on animals in her photography coursework. “I’ve always loved them,” she told me recently. “I was that kid who wrecked her dress crawling under a pickup truck to say hello to a garter snake.”
Devoted equally to the craft as she was to the animals, Holmes continued honing her skills, taking master classes in printing and portraiture until 2017.
Concurrent with her studies at ICP, Holmes began volunteering for rescue groups, including the Wild Bird Fund and Mighty Mutts in New York City, and Catskill Animal Sanctuary in Saugerties, New York. “As I spent more time experiencing animals as a caregiver and photographer, I began to question how I could profess to love them yet continue to exploit them for food and clothing.” She committed to veganism and using photography to advocate for animal liberation.
Since 2015, the year she also self-published her first book, Love and Healing at Catskill Animal Sanctuary, she has been exhibiting her images throughout the country. Now based in Toronto, she continues both practices – lawyering and photographing – the latter of which is conducted primarily on a non-profit basis. Holmes donates her services and at least fifty percent of her profits from print sales to support animal rescue.
The images Holmes was making at Catskill Animal Sanctuary when we met in 2015 were so powerful in their ability to convey animals as sentient creatures, with personalities and intelligence, that I was compelled to return to vegetarianism. She, like Plumb, whose aforementioned book includes the image Chickens in Crab Traps, often photographs at her subject’s eye level. For both photographers, this approach comes from a place of empathy and is used as a mean to evoke it in the viewer.
Three years later, in 2018, due to the indelible resonance of Holmes’ work, I visited the Sanctuary. There I met several of the animals – Callie, Bea, and Omar, among others – that Holmes’ had skillfully and compassionately photographed while studying at ICP. It was after that experience that I, too, committed to veganism. I am thankful to Holmes for the introduction to all – the beautiful animals, the extraordinary pace, founded by Kathy Stevens, and the lifestyle that is aligned with my values.
Until the 1800s, anthropomorphism was “integral to the relation between man and animal,” Berger notes in Why Look at Animals. He quotes Aristotle’s History of Animals to show far we as a culture have moved away from such an appreciation of their complex nature, “For just as we pointed out resemblances in the physical organs, so in a number of animals we observe gentleness and fierceness, mildness or cross-temper, courage or timidity, fear or confidence, high spirits or low cunning, and, with regard to intelligence, something akin to sagacity.”
I recall conversations at ICP with Holmes about anthropomorphism. Only now in retrospect do I realize that the photographer wasn’t attributing humanlike characteristics to the non-human animals in her images, as we discussed then; she was acknowledging that what we often call “human” traits are qualities that exist across species. And she was doing so then, as she does in Nest: Rescued Animals at Home, with reverence and a hint of humor. For example, in Cluckey, the bird is shown standing in front of an open refrigerator, likely – following my own personal experience doing the same – not even hungry.
Similar to her animal activist peers, photographers including Jo-Anne McArthur, Mary Shannon Johnstone, and Martin Usborne, Holmes’ images are imbued with appreciation and the belief that animals are here with us, not for us. Her perspective is informed by a devotion to basic rights – the sensibility that led her first to the field of law. Before she begins photographing, she invites the animals to be with her on their own terms. She acknowledges that an animal cannot consent to be photographed so that she attunes herself to their behavior. If an animal indicates discomfort, Holmes won’t photograph them. While some animal photography actually contributes to animal exploitation – photographing them on game farms, for example; and some reinforces the social norms that value animals for how they please humans by showcasing those bred for beauty, Holmes honors the creature foremost. There is no objectification here.
Thus, in this book, we meet a variety of birds – speckled, balding, even a chick – and on two occasions, their canine companions, which brings me back to May Oliver, who wrote about her own, plenty – though never a chicken. If she did, the poem would have been invested with the same respect and celebratory spirit that Holmes conveys in her photographs.
Artful, amusing, and tender, Holmes’ portraits are a tribute to the caregivers and birds – including those who met other fates. With Nest: Rescued Chickens at Home, she, like the other authors in my library, extends an invitation to viewers to reconsider their perception of and relation to animals – one that I gratefully accept.