For more than two decades, Jo-Anne McArthur has been bearing witness to the lives of animals that are hidden from view—inside factory farms and slaughterhouses, at roadside zoos and fur farms, and in the aftermath of ecological disaster. Her photographs are both unflinching and tender, exposing the violence that underpins our food system while refusing to look away from the individuality of the beings trapped inside it.

What’s always struck me about Jo-Anne’s work is how much it shares with conflict photography. The settings may be different, but the principles are the same: going to places most people never see, putting oneself in difficult, often dangerous situations, and coming back with images that make denial harder to achieve. Her photographs have helped shaped how the world sees animals, and they resonate deeply with the questions at the heart of Glass Walls: what truths are hidden from view, what costs are borne in silence, and what it means to look at the lives we prefer not to see.

In this conversation, Jo-Anne speaks about the toll of that work, the founding of We Animals, and why images can sometimes reach people in ways that words can’t.

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