3 The photographer brought the animals close to the camera. Moreover, the practice of taking private photos of zoo animals was nowhere near as widespread back then as it is today, especially considering that, in many zoos, such as those in Berlin, Vienna, Leipzig, and Halle, it was only possible to take photographs on zoo premises by paying for a permit. The mainly privately run photography booths had been popular since the 1930s and 1940s for various reasons: firstly, they provided an opportunity to immortalise a visit to the zoo in an individual or family portrait – at a time when photographic equipment were still much more expensive and much heavier than they are today. Photographs of children holding lion cubs, which visitors could later have taken by the Berlin Zoo photographer, captured for a visitor’s photo album the moment in which they touched a juvenile predator. Other zoos followed suit with special shows and petting zoos for baby predators.Ī drawing in the Berliner Illustrirten Zeitung puts the role of the baby predator in a nutshell with the headline “A Live Animal Toy”. In a fenced-in enclosure, visitors were able to cuddle, stroke, and feed not just sheep and goats but also little lion and tiger cubs. The Berlin Zoological Garden had been organising its own ‘baby animal zoo’ every summer since 1931. 2 And some zoos did in fact provide this opportunity. “The desire to take a lion in one’s arms and stroke it is probably one of the most coveted amongst our zoo visitors”, as Hamburg’s Stellingen Zoo reported in 1926. Lions seem to have had a particularly strong appeal. There were reports about visitors’ desiring to get as close as possible to the baby animals at the zoo. ![]() The lion cub photo motif can be traced back to at least the 1930s, 1 revealed if nothing else by the clothing the little boy is wearing and the sepia colouring of the photo from Berlin Zoo, which was taken in 1939. Getting within touching distance of young predators like bears, lions, or leopards – what now seems perplexing was very popular for a long time. When did this motif emerge, and why has it disappeared from today’s zoos? What do photos like these reveal about the relationship between zoo visitors and lion cubs? What attitudes towards and ideas about ‘wild animals’ take shape in these images, and how did animals become photo objects in the first place? And finally: What is the animal here? Is it a predator, a zoo animal, or a stuffed toy? The quest for answers does not just take us through the history of photography practice and zookeeping, but also has a lot to do with the changing politics of animal images. Many zoos once gave visitors the opportunity to have their photos taken with a lion cub. In other photos, the subject of the photo looks outside the image, like in this photo, which was taken at the Berlin Zoo in 1939. Sometimes they look either lovingly or fearfully at the animal, sometimes they look directly at the camera. ![]() Many are probably familiar with the photo motif: a man, woman, or child with a young lion on their lap. ![]() A little boy with a lion cub on the Berlin Zoo photographer’s bench in 1939.
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