Robin Schwartz

The photograph keeps the experience of being with Jake, a one-year-old baboon and his dog, cat and monkey companions with me through the years. This photo shows comradeship, love, loyalty and the universal need for comfort and play. These human qualities are the characteristics that scientists and biologists debate about when questioning whether or not animals also share them.

Photographs are painful gifts of the amazing, emphemeral, happy experiences I have had, mostly with animals but also with my daughter, Amelia. They are frozen in time for me. I do not look at my photographs because most of them haunt me and are in my head.