Leigh Griffiths: Meat | MONOVISIONS - Black & White Photography Magazine

MonoVisions Black & White Photo Contest 2024

Throughout China meat is an important part of life. Poultry and pork are staple proteins, so in the local marketplaces, live and freshly-killed animals make up most of what’s on offer. As a westerner who grew up only ever seeing meat already cut into unidentifiable pieces behind glass or on my plate, walking through a Chinese wet market is a new experience, that’s sometimes hard to see. I’ve been censored to the brutality of the meat industry my entire life, but this new exposure in China has helped me see that it’s often a necessary and not-so gruesome part of life. The honesty of these cultures has given me a greater understanding of my consumption of meat. As someone who eats meat, it has been an important experience.

In this short series I wanted to show the rawness of the markets that are lively social hubs for these communities. Using B&W, I have tried to show the Chinese local meat industry in all its raw, honest glory. At the same time, the lack of colour removes the blood in the images, making them more palatable, which plays on the western censorship I was once blinded by.

Leigh Griffiths is an Australian photojournalist and street photographer based in South East Asia. His interests are in social structures and everyday traditions. Food plays an important part of these daily routines, so much of my work focuses on the the human interactions with food in different cultures.

Website: www.leighgriffithslens.com

‘Meat’ was the Black & White Travel Series of the Year 3rd place Winner in the MonoVisions Photography Awards 2017