A small plastic tag pierces an animal’s ear. Brightly coloured, stamped with a number, it marks the animal as part of a system. It is easy to overlook. But it represents the billions of animals moving through networks of ownership and control. For Shay Salehi, this object is the story.
We Animals is proud to introduce Shay as our 2026 Animal Photojournalism Fellow. Shay is an Iranian–Polish Canadian artist living and working in New York City. Her work explores relationships between humans and other animals, drawing on photography, sculpture, and collaborative projects to examine systems of care and exploitation.
Her Fellowship project focuses on a largely unseen but ubiquitous practice in animal agriculture: identification systems. Across farms, auctions, and veterinary contexts, animals are routinely tagged, numbered, and entered into databases that track them. These systems make animals legible to industry and transform living beings into units that can be counted, monitored, and traded.
While Shay’s work has often taken a more conceptual or poetic form, she is now turning to more direct forms of visual storytelling to effectively communicate the realities animals face and to provide viewers with a clearer point of entry into these issues.
Shay Salehi
Shay Salehi
Shay Salehi
Shay’s selection as a Fellow reflects We Animals’ commitment to expanding the boundaries of animal photojournalism. Her project stood out for its creative approach to visual storytelling that invites viewers to look more closely—and differently—at systems that are often normalized or unseen.
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