Recently I visited the Toronto Zoo for the first time. Zoos may play a big role in the conservation of different species but I always feel it is a pretty sad place. By no means I am the first or the last one who comes back with this sensation. My friend Oscar Ciutat created the series „Caged“ where he captured just the eyes of several zoo animals.
Just look at the images, read the poem „The Panther“ Rainer-Maria Rilke wrote 110 years ago and decide for yourself.
The Panther
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly–. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
