
On location deep inside the Mekong, we set up and photographed a storage room in a small village. It was the main distribution centre in the area. In between shots as my assistants moved lights, I saw something next door. At first, I noticed the shafts of light coming in to what I believed was an empty storage room, however a small movement caught my attention.
A pet monkey was chained inside. I snapped a few shots before I got called at from outside and had to continue the assignment. A brief moment with a lasting impact. Assignment done, files delivered and I take a second look at the few frames I snapped. I edit them and start looking up animal websites and one article hits me, “The Perils of Keeping Monkeys as Pets”, where the author states that there is a 99.9 percent of creating a mentally disturbed animal if you try to keep them as pets.