HIDDEN: Animals in the Anthropocene, a new book featuring a collection of photographs from animal rights activists, is now for sale. And Joaquin Phoenix hopes it will “ignite a fire within each of us” and “fuel [the animal rights movement] with renewed purpose.”
With over 300 pages of heartbreaking images from more than 40 international photojournalists, HIDDEN exposes animal abuse that goes on unseen every day.
“We’d like this book to start broad, high-profile conversations about our relationships with animals,” co-editor Jo-Anne McArthur told Lady Freethinker. “While we, of course, want to sell books, the target audience is principally the media and journalists, who will write and disseminate this project.”
“The audience is also the photography world,” she continued. “To them, we say: this subject matter is important. Wildlife and conservation photography, pet portraits, and general animal photography only go so far. They only cover a certain type of animal: those we love, or those who have ecological significance, or whom we’ve simply designated as important. There are a lot of other animals and a lot of other stories. They’re important too — in and of themselves, but also as they overlap with human health and the destruction of the environment.”
Paul McCartney famously said, “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian.” This book helps replace concrete walls with glass. But was McCartney right? Or would people prefer to live in blissful ignorance?
“I think the answer is yes to both possibilities,” co-editor Keith Wilson told Lady Freethinker. “People willingly turn a blind eye to cruelty when confronted with the facts, while others are genuinely ignorant of the extent of the cruelty around them. Sadly, it is the former who are gaining in number because with so much information and imagery available, and the means to access it at our fingertips, it’s becoming harder to claim, ‘I didn’t know that.'”
“There is less excuse for pleading ignorance about the level of animal cruelty in modern society,” he continued, “and their industrial-scale slaughter for our food. When [George] Orwell wrote his famous mantra, ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ from the book 1984, he did so to illustrate how a totalitarian state manipulates public perception and distorts the truth through the control of information. Well, in 2020, such manipulation is no longer the preserve of dictatorships; it is alive and well in democracies!”
“And yet,” Wilson said, “it isn’t governments that are at the forefront of spinning the message about how animals are raised and slaughtered for consumers’ dinner plates; it’s the agricultural industries and supermarkets and advertising agencies who continue to nurture this image of happy farm animals gamboling on a green field of buttercups and daisies in the sunshine. People are complicit in this myth because that is what they want to believe! They know in their hearts that is not the case, yet they choose to look away.”
If an image truly is worth a thousand words, HIDDEN is giving a voice to the voiceless — to the millions of animals neglected, abused, tortured, and killed every year in our own backyards. This book is a massive and necessary undertaking, forcing the world to finally confront reality. Animal abuse is happening. What will we do about it?
HIDDEN is available for purchase through Indiegogo and Amazon.
Full Foreward by Joaquin Phoenix
Our society conditions us to believe that humans are superior to other species, and that some animals are meant to be eaten while others should share our homes. Wealthy industries churn out dazzling advertising campaigns and propaganda to lure children, parents, and other consumers into believing falsehoods that make us ill, exploit entire communities and wreak havoc on our planet. We are entrenched in the ideology that animals are here for us to use. We capture them, cage them, wear their skin, eat their flesh, and poison their bodies in the name of science.
There will never be a scenario in which the infliction of fear and pain on a vulnerable individual benefits humankind.
As animal rights activists, our battle is against the powerful enterprises that have normalized the torment and killing of billions of animals for food, clothing, entertainment, and experimentation each year. Like conflict photographers documenting war and other humanitarian crises, the brave photojournalists featured in this book deserve our acclaim. Their work has made it impossible for exploitative industries to plausibly deny the agony and suffering taking place behind closed doors, deliberately kept out of the public consciousness.
May the images in HIDDEN ignite a fire within each of us. May they serve as a reminder of our susceptibility to greed and egocentrism. May they be an admission of our mistakes and fuel our movement with renewed purpose. Until every cage is empty, until all are free, I am yours in action and solidarity.

So so yes , Stop all pain to the animals. Leave them alone, humans.
Wonderful world we live in. Only kindness should be given to animals. They want to live with love not hate. If you are unkind to animals, please see a shrink as you need help.
This horror has to end they are living creatures
WE NEED MORE PEOPLE LIKE THEM IN THIS WORLD. PEOPLE WHO HAVE GENUINE HEARTS.
I WOULD TAKE DEATH ANY DAY OVER EATING MEAT. THE ONLY LIFE WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO TAKE IS OUR OWN. THE DEMONS WHO RUN THIS WORLD HAVE FULL POWER TO DO SO DUE TO GOD’S FAILURE AND COMPLETE LACK OF EMPATHY. AS ABOVE, SO BELOW. PEOPLE LIKE US ARE THE ONLY SOLUTION THIS PLANET HAS. WE NEED TO UNITE AND DO MORE.
Hi
My Wife and l are turning Vegies we only eat chicken it takes time to change soon we will stop eating chicken, l cannot stand
to think what the poor animals go throught in the slugther houses.
And its about time we stopped palm oil and logging and mining soon be no forest left
All animals should be free to live in Peace no hunting, no killing, or being cruel to any Animals us the animal lovers are there vioce
Oh Ban FUR FARMING IN THE EU shame on you Eu COUNTRIES who do this Dammark is on of them and most go to China or Hong Kong.
Animal Lives Matter
love from uk
What a fantastic decent guy Joaquin Phoenix is. If only more people were like him to put an end to this needless slaughter and abuse of our sentient friends.
May God bless these lovely innocent animals that deserve to live and be free and happy. I have been against all this cruelty and abuse towards all animals in the world since I was a little girl. I pray that young people now a days will stand up and do something and adults. It has to stop and I don’t know what I can do to help these poor scared and sad animals. Please help people and please have a heart and forget about your stomach and what you like to eat. These animals are treated worse than we can imagine! It has to stop but I am afraid it never will. Thank you Joaquin Phoenix for what you are doing and for your awareness and heart. Peace to all.
Joaquin Phoenix is a good man. He & Rooney Mara are both vegan animal rights activists who believe in compassion over killing.
For everyone else who hasn’t realized how important your dietary choices are, please, please go vegan – for your health, for the animals, for the planet.
Humans are the cruelest beings on this planet. Those that abuse animals need to be abused by spending a good amount of time with a jail sentence for their proven abuse. No more warnings when animal abuse is reported and identified, there needs to be laws that an immediate 6 month jail sentence should be immediately administered without the court action.
SOMETHINGS GOTTA CHANGE , THIS IS A VERY CRUEL WORLD FOR ANIMALS AND I FOR ONE AM SICK OF IT. HOW IS IT ALLOWED IN THIS DAY AND AGE ?? WHY DOES IT HAPPEN ?? IT’S NO DIFFERENT THAN BEING CRUEL TO KIDS. THEY ARE THE INNOCENTS IN THIS SICK WORLD !!
This is long over due,,,Thank you Joaquin Phoenix…
UNBELIEVABLE CRUELTY. I PRAY TO GOD TO PUNISH THESE MONSTERS.
My heart bleeds, I bleed. I feel it and it has changed my life.
You might change some of the decent humans out but you know that evil people roam the earth so I am hoping this book would go after the real thugs and those are the companies, farms, CEOs etc who are the real culprit for all the hurt and damage to animals. Close their operations until they get their act together. and stop pointing fingers to the consumers. We need food and we are trusting these CEOs of huge companies who need to control and keep an eye that everyone in their company is in compliance with the ethical treatment of animals. So where do you start? You start with the top people and you hold the CEO’s accountable.
We no longer need these poor animals to survive, go vegan to help them, help the planet heal and for our own bodies to become healthy and with a good immune system.
Kudos to all who have put so much heart and soul into bringing light to the horror that surrounds us with animal abuse. Our human race is deplorable!
EVIL!! THESE ANIMALS DO NOT DESERVE THIS!!!
THANK GOD THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO KNOW HOW TO PROTECT AND LOOK OUT FOR THE CRITTERS THAT SOME HUMANS HAVE TREATED SO CRUEL I WISH THESE HEARTLESS BASTARDS COULD DIE A 1000 TIMES WITH ALL THE PAIN THEY HAVE INFLICKED
I don’t need to buy the book, I’ve seen it all. I’m vegan for 6 years now and I would never go back to eating torture. There are too many worthless toxic waste out there.
PS: Don’t look at Adonias website, if you don’t want to cry your eyes out or have nightmares for life. It is repugnance at its worst.
BLOG: OS ANIMAIS PEDEM SOCORRO E JUSTIÇA! http://wwwsossocorramosanimais.blogspot.com/