in almost every picture #10

The tenth edition of In almost every picture shows old images of pigs being bottle-fed by clients in Montreal restaurant Au Lutin Qui Bouffe. Picture after picture, we see customers with a piglet in their laps or on their table- stroking it, holding its tail, or poised with knife and fork, pretending to eat it. Playing with their food. The series is epic, begun in 1938 and continuing over thirty-five years, every image made by local photographer Jean-Paul Cuerrier. We’re confronted by a fundamental difference in attitudes, between those of our own generation, and those of our parents and grandparents. Judging by the customers’ innocent smiles, the pig is a cute diversion, not a reason to call the hygiene inspectors, PETA or CNN. Their entertainment is our animal rights abuse and we’re reminded of our own relationship to what we eat. There’s a second, unavoidable theme to this book: obsession. These images are repetitive, shot with little variation in angle or composition. Photographer Cuerrier is believed to have taken two hundred and fifty such shots in one night. Even after the death of the project’s initiator, restaurant owner Joseph McAbbie, Cuerrier continued, amassing thousands of images- most of them later destroyed by fire. That aside, there’s one very obvious and very ominous question remaining: what exactly happened to the pigs?