Trapped For Entertainment

• Photographer
  Sandra Hoyn
• Photo Date
  2025

Wildlife tourism is marketed as harmless fun or cultural experience. Photographed in various tourist locations across Thailand, this series exposes the exploitation of primates under the guise of human entertainment. Primates are highly intelligent and social animals. Some are torn from their mothers at an early age, illegally sold and kept in isolation. Trainers try to humanise these captive animals – dressing them up, making them perform through fear and punishment, turning them into props. What the audience sees is entertainment. What the animals experience is trauma.

Sandra Hoyn (b. 1976) is an independent photojournalist based in Hamburg, Germany. She studied photography at the University of Applied Sciences Hamburg, graduating in 2005. She workes for magazines, NGOs and on projects focusing on social and environmental issues. Since 2007 she has been represented by laif, agency for photos and reports.