A family of tourists posed with elephants on Lucky Beach – a popular destination in Thailand. In the age of social media, tourism involving wildlife ‘photo ops’ has been burgeoning. Although many performing Asian elephants are abused and forced to act unnaturally, their keepers often have little choice of employment.
Once widespread in forests, Asian elephants are now endangered in the wild: only around 3,500 remain in Thailand’s national parks and reserves. There are also more than 3,000 domesticated elephants in Thailand, continuing a long history of human use, formerly in transport, war and logging, but today mainly as entertainment.
USA
Kirsten is a photojournalist based in Brooklyn, USA, who started out at daily newspapers in the USA and Mexico. She received an award from Pictures of the Year International and a Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography. Her work has been exhibited at Visa pour l'Image, The United States Senate, the National Gallery of Canada, Harvard University and other galleries and museums.
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