These images were created as a commission for an animal rights activist group in the summer of 2003. The plan was to photograph the organization’s activists who had volunteered to be part of the project. Each volunteer would be photographed in the nude and in the environment.
To prepare for the photo shoots, and because I would not meet them until the day of shooting, I asked the participants to fill out a questionnaire that would help me get a better sense of who they were. What is your favorite element and/or type of landscape? What is your favorite animal(s)/totem animals and reason, what is most important to you about working in the animal protection movement? What is the most interesting thing about you, the most influential book you have read? These were just some of the questions. The replies were varied, enthusiastic and fascinating. I made notes and sketches about each activist and with his or her response in mind, chose an appropriate environment that held some spiritual connection. How I planned to place them in that environment was also strongly influenced by their answers to the questions.
Much of the shooting was done on an extensive and diversified piece of property, home to a donkey sanctuary, in rural Ontario, Canada. In some cases I traveled to the activists’ special spots where they felt particularly connected, and in many cases they came to my property in northern Ontario.
The purpose of the project was to cultivate a visceral connection between our species and the animals that inhabit the planet. Towards that end the final images explored human beings as animals; that we share this planet with other animals and that we too are ultimately vulnerable to our own destructive behavior, both physical and psychological.
From the hundreds of images taken I selected thirteen (six of which are included here) to create a personal body of work, a narrative entitled EXTINCT. EXTINCT is a sequence of images that reflects upon the slow vanishing of the natural world and that we, as the sole destroyer of the earth, are causing our own extinction.
Structurally, EXTINCT traces the evolution of the human species as an allegory for the planet’s own living system. Beginning with immersion in water to partial immersion and progressing to the complete exposure on land, man is both basking in and hiding from the elements. EXTINCT portrays humanity in a non-elevated state, stripped of protection and power, all vulnerable.
As the sequence progresses, man becomes both the hunter and the hunted. The final image entitled Void returns full circle to the water, alluding to humankind’s potential end. EXTINCT invites the viewer to ask what is happening to our planet and what is and is not our responsibility. Will we as a species become extinct and take every living thing with us?
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Elizabeth Siegfried lives in Toronto, Canada. Born in the United States in 1955, she has worked with the historical process of platinum for twenty-five years and has exhibited her images in Canada (Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto among other galleries), the US (Spectrum Gallery, Rochester, New York among other galleries), Italy, Japan (Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts) and Mexico (Galeria de Arte Fotografico, San Miguel de Allende). Known for her work in self portraiture and photographic narrative, Siegfried has had her photographs reproduced and discussed in such publications as Schwarzweiss, La Fotografia Actual, The Women’s Daybook, ARTNews, Shutterbug and Camera Arts Magazine. Her first book entitled LifeLines was published in 2000 and includes a literary introduction by the National Book Award Winner Andrea Barrett. Although platinum is Siegfried’s first choice in technique, in recent years she has explored producing selected images as iris prints, resulting in images larger in size than is feasible through the platinum process. The work of Elizabeth Siegfried increasingly has become recognized for its intricacy of detail and sophistication of content.
Siegfried’s work is represented in many private and public collections, including the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Japan, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in Ottawa and the Peter E. Palmquest Women in Photography International Archive held at the Beinicke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Further information on the works of Elizabeth Siegfried is available at
