Location: United States
We all have our life purpose, it’s just a matter of finding it.
Tami Crupi Zeman found hers when she took her first photography class and has been immersed in the study and taking of photographs ever since.
She uses a camera to tell stories through her pictures. Making sense of the world by asking questions and pointing the lens at situations, or people, to get the answers.
It is a personal exploration, but because of the innate connection we all have - it becomes universal.
Tami Crupi Zeman is originally from New Jersey, and now calls Vermont home. Tami, and her husband Bruce live in a 230 year-old farmhouse with spectacular sunsets and views of the both the Adirondacks and Green Mountains.
The Zeman’s share their home with their furry children – Hobbes, a little brown dachshund, Olivia, “Olive” for short, a black lab, and Willie, an adorable rag doll cat.
“ The Voice of the Voiceless”
Tami Crupi Zeman
“Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.
- Theodor Adorno
When one thinks of a farm, various images come to mind: pigs happily rolling in mud, chickens scratching the dirt, or cows, peacefully grazing in a field. They are living, feeling, and sentient beings. Farm animals need fresh air to breathe, ample room to walk and run, and a healthy environment to express their natural behaviors. The truth is that not all farms are the idyllic places we have imagined.
Each year, ten billion chickens, cows, pigs, sheep and other innocent, sentient animals are forced to live in filthy, windowless sheds, wire cages, gestation crates, veal crates, and other confinement systems in factory farms and are deprived, drugged and manhandled. They are then hauled to a slaughterhouse and slaughtered under atrocious conditions. Ten percent never make it to the slaughterhouse, instead, dying from stress-induced disease or injuries.
Deep down in our hearts and souls, most of us retain a compassion for beings with other faces, which is why we don’t want to know how and why our food is killed for us.
Did you know chickens can count? Pigs are smarter than a dog or three-year-old child? Cows form close friendships? Turkeys know one another by their voices, and sheep recognize faces of other sheep, and of people? Animals demonstrate complicated problem-solving abilities, have rich social lives, and feel a wide-range of emotions. They are like humans in many ways. One of those ways is that they suffer physical pain and mental anguish. These intelliegent, feeling, beings should be treated with great compassion and respect.
“I am the voice of the voiceless
Through me the dumb shall speak
Till the deaf world’s ear
Be made to hear
The wrongs of the wordless weak.
And I am my brother’s keeper
And I shall fight his fight
And speak the word
For beast and bird
Till the world shall set things right.”
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)
“Voice of the Voiceless”
“Andy napping with buddy.”
“Sugar and Baby”
