With the technological legacy of cinema, the processes of animal“marginalization”and “mummification”in modern society go hand in hand, thus giving rise to the primordial form of animal imagery in the dual dimensions of modern technology and death ethics. In the process of revisiting early films, the“animal world”constructed by animal imagery reveals a shared aesthetic trajectory both within the films and in broader cultural contexts. This process uncovers its historical evolution along two dimensions: visual representation and content censorship—and ultimately points toward a path of post-human ethics. Based on ethical thinking in the post-human context and the perspective of“animal studies,”the visual ethics of animal imagery manifest across the three dimensions of the spectator, aesthetics, and practice.

animal imagery, visual ethics, the post-human context, animal ethics, gazing