William Wegman

William Wegman is probably my favorite contemporary artist. The most obvious reason for my love would be the subject matter of his work, his gorgeous Weimaraners, however this is not the only reason. While does shoot his dogs and to many people just makes cute images with his dogs in funny costumes and poses, there is a lot more to it than that. For any of you that are reading this who have pets of your own and have tried to use them in projects, it is much harder than it looks isn’t it. Anyone that was in the intermediate class this semester or Mindy’s beginning class has heard a story or two about the monsters of mine that I like to call dogs. It is next to impossible to get them to do what you want when you want and if my two who pose and behave half as good as Wegman’s I would die a happy woman. I get a lot of inspiration from his work with his dogs. His work though is much more than just photos of his dogs, for example in his one shot Trainer, the image speaks volumes. His dog is depicted here with some kind of headdress and human clothes with human arms what appears to be a leash or tie out of some sort. This image is hilarious for its content but can also be interpreted to mean more and questions arise like why is the dog the trainer? Why is the dog half human? What does this say about the dog/owner relationship? When you focus on the image itself the quality of the photo is amazing. Taken in 1999 as one of his large format Polaroid images it is amazing. When you think of Polaroid instantly what comes to mind for me is a dinky camera I had when I was about 12 years old and the film came in packs of 12 and you had to wait forever for this tiny like 4x4 picture to develop. Looking at his work with the Polaroid’s, unless I was told that that was the camera the image was created I never would have know. Aesthetically the image is just pleasing to the eye because the lighting is very strategically used and the color scheme plays well with it.