Animals are among oldest forms of entertainment, from ancient times watching wild beasts roam to the first printed lolcats; dated around the 1800s.

During the 1950s and 1960s Ethicon, the largest surgical suture producer on the planet, released a series of booklets featuring cats with cute captions to “make a point of the that that catgut, one of [their] principal products, is derived from sheep and beed intestines– not from the tissue of cats.”

All pohotography is credit of Walter Chandoha, who has a over 200,000 photographs, with a focus on pets and plants, for sale as stock on his website.

This picture is from a random day of photography with my brother and I a few years ago. The fortune seemed appropriate for a number of reasons.

Friends and strangers,
Thanks for all the good times.

Living portrait cinemagraphs and behind the scenes coverage from the Misguided Goddess campaign which raised money through physical art sales on behalf of the non-profit awareness group FUCK CANCER.

We dedicated it to our mums as they both had battles with cancer.

Luckily Ben’s mum is still with us. She went to the hospital when she thought she had a fierce stomach virus from travelling in India. She found out she had colon cancer. After having chemotherapy and other treatments, she won over the disease and had a renewed sense of life and thirst for travel. She also trained and took part in a super sprint triathlon and is an awesome semi-retired library technician now living in BC. She is responsible for the filmmaker, designer, artist and imagineer that Ben is today.

Sadly, Jon, at age sixteen, lost his mum to undetected, metastasized, stage four breast cancer on August 30th following her second battle with this disease. She had a chronic cough as the only indication of anything being wrong until it was too late. After more than two brutal years of torture and sterile hospitals with tumours all over her body including her brain, she died peacefully in a medically induced comma at home with her husband and son by her side. Her fierce struggle and determination to stay alive as long as possible to see Jon live is a testament to a mother’s strength and dedication to her only child. She was his first photographic mentor, ever loving cheerleader, harshest critic and the source of confidence in his own abilities.

Both of their fights were and will forever be something they will honour by believing in the gentle, loving strength in women that far surpasses the power any muscle, intellect, economy or bullet. It was an honour to form something so fun, empowering and fulfilling with unapologetic imagery. Thank you, mum!

Please have a chat with your parents about looking for cancer actively today. It could change your life and save theirs.

FUCK CANCER,
Ben Z Cooper and JDR Currie

Up early this morning to shoot at Riverside.

During the last week, my friend and I went up to the Easter Seals camp in Kelowna, a camp for disabled children, to make a documentary to promote their efforts in conjunction with PhotoSensitive and Canon.

We were a couple of the over twenty-four photographers and videographers from PhotoSensitive that are visiting twelve of these Easter Seals camps in the summer of 2011 to capture the energy and enthusiasm of Canadian youth with disabilities from all across the country.