Cattle near Longtown are culled and burned on a farm in response to the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
The past decade has seen its fair share of human deaths… And yet … I still find this image the most telling, for such is our divorce from the great balance of the living world, that we can look upon this immolation coolly, while when we see humans burn we flinch and turn away. Besides, the burning cows are our fatted calves and our golden calf, they are objects of wanton sacrifice and spurious worship, they are nature robbed of sentience and commodified, and as such they are synonymous with all our self-murdering, all our Promethean hubris, and all our Neronic fiddling about.
~ Will Self
Source: Will Self’s photograph of the decade in The Top 10 photographs of the decade, The Guardian
