The Médiathèque Valais - Martigny examines its audiovisual collections through the prism of a cultural phenomenon: the domestication of animals.

The dog, the cow and the mule were not created in a day: they are the result of the slow, ingenious work of generations of breeders since the Neolithic period. The selection of specific characteristics of interest to our ancestors and present in the wild animals they hunted or mingled with enabled domesticated animals as we know them today to appear, exist and evolve.

Comprising a photographic album of agriculture and daily life in the Alps, the Photogenic Domestic Animals exhibition showcases over 600 archival images, a heritage that bears witness to the last days of a subsistence agro-pastoral economy that has now disappeared.

At the same time, the exhibition evokes the tasks of an invisible economy, the human domestic economy, and recalls the work and days of the Old Country.

A tribute to the animals and human beings who walked side by side for over 5,000 years, thanks to the knowledge patiently elaborated and developed elsewhere on planet Earth. A perspective that incorporates archaeozoology and its recent advances and discoveries, in conjunction with genetics.


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