by Estela de Castro (Photographer), Ruth Toledano (Text by (Art/Photo Books))
Portraits of abused animals, from highway roadkill to the circus
Estela de Castro (born 1978) is a renowned Spanish portrait photographer who currently serves as the official photographer of the Spanish royal family. Though she has had a vast and wide-ranging career, her work has always maintained a strong link to the struggle for human and animal rights. In this latest series, de Castro aims to raise awareness about animal abuse through portraits of animals rescued from circumstances of abandonment, captivity, hunting, testing, breeding or illegal trafficking. These powerful images make us reflect on the ways in which we classify, control and dominate everything that human beings have deemed to belong to a separate species.