The Beginning
I got Man Ray for $35 in Long Beach, my wife wanted a dog and I didn’t because I was a serious, busy artist. We were looking for Dalmations and we couldn’t find any. We never looked in a dog book. Someone said, “Weimaraners are good dogs … ” and I’d never heard of them. We saw an ad in the paper, “Weimaraners $35,” and we went down to Long Beach; this boy was there, the dogs were just 6 weeks old, and I still didn’t want one, so I thought I’d trick her—I flipped a coin, saying tails we’d get one, heads we wouldn’t—it was tails 7 times in a row … first it was 2 out of 3, then 3 out of 5, 5 out of 7 … tails, tails, tails …! I had dogs growing up but I wasn’t responsible for them so I had to figure out what to do with this little guy. I’d take him to the studio and he’d chew up things I was working on. I’d tie him up in a corner and he’d howl. One day I was setting up a video camera and he began to chew the microphone, so I turned the thing on him and filmed him chewing the microphone.
Pictures
Man Ray was 9 years old when I first took pictures of him with the Polaroid (camera). This is when I started dressing him up, he’s never dressed up in the early pictures. Later on, he’s kind of losing his form, he’s a really old dog, and in a way it was a way to protect him—I started to cover him with blankets and things like that. I got Fay 5 years after Man Ray died, it was the first time that I had a really young, thoroughbred Weimaraner and she had this vitality and that’s when the pictures started to move upwards … with the polaroid camera it’s always a vertical picture, a vertical format—to get something upward I put her on a pedestal, so when I covered her with a blanket she started to look like a woman. My assistant was hanging out behind her, working and moving her arms so that it appeared that her arms were connected [to Fay]. It gave me the idea to make characters for her. Around this time, I was invited to appear on “Sesame Street” and that’s where the children’s stories began.
The Gaze
The dogs have this gaze into the camera that’s incredible—not with anticipation, but it’s sort of just there … It’s the difference between photographing a person and a dog—it’s spellbinding, people are trying to give you the right angle or bracing for it, preparing for it, mugging for it … a kind of exhibitionism. The dogs are just there, it’s so calming having a dog up at your eye level looking into this big camera—seeing the space between them, it’s a calmness that’s really amazing. It’s not silly or funny working with the dogs, it’s actually kind of quiet and serene. You know, dogs don’t really say that much. They have this internal quality that’s quite fantastic. It’s very beautiful, rewarding, almost this sensual, spiritual inspiration of connecting to them.
Inspiration
Sometimes there are art historical references that creep in after the fact, after the pictures are done. My background is art history—but I really try to avoid bringing that to the forefront, making cute art history statements—I’m really not poking fun at art or anything. I’m not really a satirist either, it’s more a single variation, whatever pops into my mind, sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s serious. Lately I’ve been using the dogs without any props, this new film really shows the detail, and I’m really into the fur, the color and texture, it’s really sensuous. The dogs are the perfect muse.
Copyright @1999 by William Wegman
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