Description
“Walking the dog. A tribute to Keith Arnatt" it’s a project that pays tribute to the British artist on the occasion of the 40 years of his photographic series "Walking the Dog" (1979).
I tried to make a version of his work with the same characteristics as he did: 50 black and white analog square photos; with subjects -humans and dogs- looking at the camera; without any other living thing that could distract; shot it in the photographer’s town and with citizens as protagonists, in this case at La Roca del Vallès (Catalonia).
I do not intend to prove that ‘dogs look like their masters’ -or vice versa. Instead, I have been interested in finding attitudes that can conveying one to another, looking for the difference in similarity and trying to imagining stories and situations.
Keith Arnatt was inspired by August Sander’s portraits of men walking dogs (c.1914). I did not want to interpret or adapt Arnatt either, but I wanted to perpetuate his idea as purely as possible. This is a work that captures a longlasting concept. As Richard Dawkins named in "The Selfish Gene", a 'meme' is a cultural transmission unit that behaves with biological criteria. Then ‘taking photos of walking the dog' is a meme that survives, spreads and reproduces itself jumping from one brain to another over time.
Foreword by artist and professor Marta Juvanteny.
(Rolleiflex T camera / Ilford HP5+ film/ Adox Atomal 49 developer / Epson V800 scanner)
