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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Sixty Seven: The art of salesmanship – more than a job > Butchers, Kairouan, Tunisia, 2008
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09-NOV-2008

Butchers, Kairouan, Tunisia, 2008

The severed head of a huge bull hangs over a pair of butchers as they share a late evening cup of tea. For them, and many like them, the job fills a social need as much as an economic one. They may not have many customers at the moment, but they share a sense of camaraderie. The huge head is an incongruity – they pay no heed to either it, or the skinned goat sheathed in plastic that hangs at left. The slaughtered animals function as both products and signage.

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Phil Douglis04-Nov-2009 18:00
By the time most American consumers see their meat, it is a sanitized, shrink-wrapped, abstraction of itself. In the third world, however, the slaughter of animals is up front and personal. You usually buy your meat from the fellow who killed the animal, and the residue of that killing is in plain sight. In this part of the world, nothing goes to waste either -- the head, for example, hangs here as a product for sale, not as something you would want to forget existed.
Carol E Sandgren04-Nov-2009 05:18
Definitely an unusual lifestyle with all those body parts hanging around! Pretty ghoulish to an average American I think, but to them, a part of everyday life. I like the composition of the body parts and the men standing around drinking their tea.
Phil Douglis02-Dec-2008 21:25
Mooove, indeed. A Maybloomian pun that made my day. Thanks.
Iris Maybloom (irislm)02-Dec-2008 20:43
Talk about cultural diversity!!! If I found myself sitting under a cow's head, I would immediately mooove.
Phil Douglis30-Nov-2008 23:42
You point out a cultural truth here, Tim -- every culture comes to take its own customs for granted, yet someone visiting a culture for a first time is apt to be startled by those same customs. In our country, the head of a slaughtered cow hanging in a shop would seem barbaric. In this culture, it is simply a product to be sold, and until it is sold, it is used as signage to identify the nature of the shop.
Tim May30-Nov-2008 20:49
I saw several of the heads of cattle as we traveled in Tunisia - It is such an example of the diversity of the world. This is relatively common place in Tunisia - we find it startling.
Phil Douglis29-Nov-2008 04:57
And that's the incongruity here, Alina -- the juxtaposition of the usual and the unusual.
Alina29-Nov-2008 01:12
Great capture Phil. Usual cup of tea under unusual head of a bull.
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