William Wegman Exhibit Reflection

Hope Okoro

Visiting the William Wegman exhibit, Undressed and Undressed, was quite an unusual yet interesting experience. In the exhibit, the pictures were arranged in an organized matter, just as any exhibit, however, it was strange and unexpected to see dogs dressed in human clothes and wigs as the main exhibition, no humans, just dogs. There were two or three floors of this. According to the proactive research I made and the description on the bottom of the pictures, Wegman took these picture in the 80s to the early 2000s. The title for the pictures were normal, for example, Bus stop or Coat of Arms, it was almost as if Wegman ignored the fact these were dogs that were incorporate in human circumstances and not actual humans, which I found quite hilarious. I wasn’t exactly sure what categories the pictures were broken into, but I think Wegman’s whole point of this exhibit was to create an “feeling of irony” for the visitors/viewers, by creating an organized space with good lighting for the pictures that is pleasing to the eyes, but making the actual displayed pictures dogs in funny yet unusual situations.

In William Wegman’s, Dressed and Undressed, he portrays his dogs as regular human beings, by placing them in human clothing and accessories. I think Wegman did this to see how it would look if he were to incorporate an animal into human life. He did this for nature as well. I think he sees putting something as unusual as a dog in clothes and wigs along with combining it with different elements of photography such as, (shallow) sense of depth, contrast, breaking pattern, and most of them being taken at eye level angle. In a debate of whether this exhibit is about humans or the dogs, I would have to say, it’s indirectly about humans (the subject of matter). Wegman uses his dogs to imitate human nature, human life, and human style. In one of his pieces for example, Blonde on Browne, 1991, he puts a wig on one of his dogs with the dog facial expression as confused and somewhat unhappy, which is funny and usual, but normal for a human. Using contrast in photography terms by color and in difference overall, he does this to show how weird it would look to incorporate dogs into human style and how uncomfortable it would be for the dogs. Another example of how Wegman uses his dogs to show how usual it is for them to be involved in human style, Untitled, 1999, is a polaroid of a dog’s hoof, in a red high heel filling the frame, with the black background making the color of the heel to “pop”. It looks as ridicules as it sounds but that’s Wegman’s point in all this, to show the ridiculous of dogs imitating human style and nature.

One of the pictures in Wegman’s exhibit I would say was my favorite was, Untitled, 1999. It’s a bit hard to explain in words what I like about this photo, but what I found hilarious was that Wegman just photographed a dog’s hoof in a high heel and named it “Untitled”, perhaps because he didn’t know how else to describe this unusual photo. But in photography terms, it’s pleasing to my eyes how the red heel just pops, with the help of the black background causing contrast. The filling of the frame with a nice placement of just the dog’s hoof and the red heel, gave me a sense of “what’s going here?”.  I could perceive some breaking of pattern going here, with the dark background, brown fur, then the unexpected pop of red, just breaking the pattern of dull, dark colors.