Behind the Picture: Hansel Mieth’s Wet, Unhappy Monkey
It is, without question, one of the most famous, most frequently reproduced animal photographs ever made. But photographer Hansel Mieth‘s own attitude toward her 1938 portrait of a sodden rhesus monkey hunched in the water off of Puerto Rico was, to put it bluntly, conflicted. In fact, the German-born Mieth (1909-1998) memorably called the creature…