More Than Coffee Table Decor: Stand-Out Animal Photography, Art & Poetry Books

We’re not shy about our love of books at We Animals.

We believe books, storytelling, art, and beautiful imagery can change people’s minds and challenge preconceptions.

A carefully-crafted book invites us into the lives of other animals, offering us the opportunity to reconsider and challenge our fractured relationship with other species.

And in an online world, holding a physical copy of a book is a unique experience. If you’re passionate about photography, there is nothing like viewing a photograph in print.

If you follow photography, you likely know world-renowned photographer Nick Brandt. His massive new body of work, The Day May Break (2021), is the first part of a global series portraying people and animals impacted by environmental destruction. We are utterly mesmerized by the images and their execution.

In over one hundred photographs, Captive reveals the lives of animals in zoos and aquaria around the world.

In recent years, the role of zoos and aquaria as centres for conservation, education, and entertainment has been placed under scrutiny. McArthur’s aim is to invite us to reflect on how we see, and fail to see, one another through the bars, across the moat, or on either side of the glass. Captive is a book that will challenge our preconceptions about zoos and aquaria, and serves as a contribution to the growing analyses of the ethics of these institutions.

Gordon Meade has published another searing, knock-your-socks-off book of poetry entitled, Ex-Posed: Animal Elegies. It was inspired by our book, HIDDEN: Animals in the Anthropocene, and published by our friends at Lantern Publishing & Media. The poems are about images taken by our founder Jo-Anne McArthur and other photojournalists.

This is a book the world so desperately needs to see. Created by our friends Keith Wilson and Britta Jaschinski, this book of photography, The Evidence Project, illustrates the interconnectedness and interdependence of all life on earth and calls upon humans to change our ways before it’s too late.

Through powerful, sensitive imagery, FOX Neighbour Villain Icon sheds light on the truth about foxes, dispelling myths and exploring how these misconceptions have influenced society’s attitude towards them. Award-winning photographers Neil Aldridge, Matthew Maran, and Andy Parkinson documented the British Red Fox for over 20 years. Together with a series of informative essays, their photographs shed new light on this enigmatic and misunderstood animal.

Vegan Art: A Book of Visual Protest is a collection of sketches, illustrations, paintings, and photography from 21 contemporary art activists on the front line of the vegan art protest movement, brought together by art-ivist illustrator Tommy Kane.

We are thrilled this collection is finally available to the world, and we are proud that We Animals’ images contribute to this provocative, unflinching, and satirical book.

Isa Leshko is an American photographer and writer whose first book, Allowed to Grow Old was published in April 2019. The book, compiled of images taken over nearly a decade, examines the themes of animal rights, aging, and mortality through portraits of elderly rescued farmed animals who have been given the unlikely chance to grow old.

Initially published in 2013, We Animals is the book that started it all.

We’re proud to offer the third edition of We Animals — sixteen additional pages of photographs and Jo-Anne McArthur’s engrossing narrative, always telling the stories of those who can’t speak for themselves.

The third edition of We Animals is an invaluable guide for aspiring animal photojournalists.

You may know Jo-Anne McArthur’s photograph of a pig in a slaughterhouse. She’s on her knees, eyes closed, screaming, as she is bashed on the head by a club. After photographing the brutal scene, Jo sent the image to her friend Martin Rowe, unedited.

The Animals Are Leaving Us is a poetic reflection and examination of the omnipresence and yet the vanishing of animals within and from an environment entirely defined by the whims and appetites of human beings.

HIDDEN is an unflinching book of photography about our conflict with non-human animals around the globe, as depicted through the lenses of 40 award-winning photojournalists.

The book shines a light on the invisible animals in our lives: those we have a close relationship with and yet fail to see. The stories within its pages are proof of the emergency confronting animals globally, from industrial farming to climate change, and demonstrate the connection between animal suffering and human health. HIDDEN: Animals in the Anthropocene is a historical document, a memorial and an indictment of what is and should never again be.

HIDDEN becomes a cherished artifact for those who love photography, animals, or thought-provoking and historic books. It is the seminal book on animal photojournalism, and it is moving.

First-place and gold winner in Pictures of the Year International, Independent Publisher and Prix de la Photographie Paris.