Wegman World

March Puppies

People often ask me if the puppies I photograph are always my dogs. Usually, they are not. (My last litter was Candy's, in 2004.) A few times a year, some of my weimeraner friends will bring their litters by the studio, and I will work with their puppies.

 

In recent years I have been photographing puppies raised by Brian and Beth Meany of Syracuse and Gene and Renee LaFollette from Virginia, weimaraner people I met through the late great Jinny Alexander. To many Jinny was queen mother of weimaraners in America. The litters I have shot in the last year have been the first without Jinny's presence. She has been missed.

Last week we photographed three six-week-old little darlings, a litter born from Gene and Renee's dog Java. They were exceptionally, almost unbearably, cute. The most compelling shots were close ups using minimal or no props and complimentary background tones. To achieve this, we used an extension ring, which gave the effect of a macro lens -- we were able to get closer.

 

Adult dogs can shy from puppies. Not Flo. (Watch a video of Flo interacting with the puppies here.) My favorite is of two puppies sleeping on Flo's back, using her as furniture.

 

 

The six-week-old puppies' expressions are so different from those of eight weeks, the age one typically adopts a puppy. At this age they observe us without expectation, just openness.  Later they will exhibit a range of emotions for us to interpret as we will.

 

I love photographing puppies at various stages of their development, but especially love the 5-6 week-ers. They are strong enough to handle and are rather predictable so you can work with them around their daily cycle of sleep-eat-play-sleep. Their eyes are very, very blue at this age. Later they will (typically) turn a yellow amber color.

-- WW

It Happened at Pomona

One of the Pacific Standard Time shows that features WW's works, "It Happened at Pomona,"  at the Pomona College Museum of Art, closed this week. If you didn't make it out to LA this time, check out some installation shots below.

Bloglove: WW on Photo Booth

William Wegman, Eustace Tilly, 1999

The New Yorker's blog Photo Booth featured WW today in its Valentine post. See the photo essay, titled "Hold Me," here.

WW featured in Abe Frajindlich's "Penelope's Hungry Eyes"

William Wegman, NYC, 2005 © Abe Frajndlich

Called "one of the most important photography books of 2011" by La Lettre, Abe Frajindlich's book, Penelope's Hungry Eyes, features the above portrait he shot of WW. To learn more about the book, and Frajindlich's thoughts on shooting this image of WW, read La Lettre's article here.

From WW: Pacific Standard Time

Pacific Standard Time is three hours behind Eastern Standard Time, so if you go to see my works in the various exhibitions in California, be aware of that if you are traveling from New York.

Being from the east myself I was ahead of my time when I was living and working in LA in the early nineteen seventies. In seventy I got my dog who I named Man Ray, after the artist Man Ray, a New Jersey artist who lived part time in Europe, in a whole different time zone.  My dog became bicoastal, living in New York in the late seventies and early eighties.  

William Wegman, Milk/Floor, 1970

One of the works in the exhibition is an early one called "Milk/Floor". It depicts Man Ray as a puppy drinking a puddle of milk on the floor. Then I rebuilt the floor under the milk and dog and re photographed it. It was extremely difficult to rebuild the floor without disturbing the milk and the dog. Even as a puppy Man Ray had a lot of patience.

-- WW

Pacific Standard Time

Have you heard about Pacific Standard Time? It is a collaboration between museums, galleries and other institutions in southern California celebrating the birth of L.A. art. 

  William Wegman, Artist, 1971

WW created a large body of work in the early 70's in and around L.A., and is included in several PST exhibitions. Here is a list of where you can see his work as part of this fantastic series:

Orange County Museum of Art, October 8 - January 22, 2012

“State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970,” Orange County Museum of Art. Traveling to Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, February 29 - June 17, 2012 

Pomona College Museum of Art, December 3 - February 18, 2012 

“It Happened at Pomona,” Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA 

The J. Paul Getty Museum, December 20 - May 6, 2012 

“In Focus: Los Angeles, 1945-1980,” The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

And coming in 2013:

University Art Museum

“West Coast Wegman” California State University, Long Beach

Check back tomorrow for a post from WW about Pacific Standard Time. 

Cross Training

William Wegman, Cross Training, 2005

 

This year, William Wegman has partnered with Light Work, a Syracuse not-for-proft art center, in creating a new photographic edition to benefit the organization. Light Work recently celebrated 25 years of helping artists gain access to dark rooms, exhibition spaces, as well as hosting a prestigious artist-in-residence program. 

Cross Training, 2005 was originally a polaroid of WW's dog Penny. This edition is a silver gelatin print.

Read more about the print here.

Seeing Stars, by Simon Armitage

Earlier this year Alfred A. Knopf published Simon Armitage's  "Seeing Stars" , a new book of poetry. We were very pleased when asked if one of WW's works could illustrate the cover. Below is the cover, and one of our favorite poems from the book. 

My Difference
by Simon Armitage, from "Seeing Stars" 

I’ve been writing a lot of poems recently about my
difference but my tutor isn’t impressed. He hasn’t said as
much, yet it’s clear that as far as he’s concerned my
difference doesn’t cut much ice. He wants me to dress my
difference with tinsel and bells and flashing lights, or sit it
on a float and drive it through town at the head of the May
Day Parade. “Tell me one interesting fact about your
difference,” he says, so I tell him about the time I lost my
difference down the plughole in a Bournemouth guesthouse
and had to fish it back with a paperclip on a length of
dental floss. He says, “Er, that’s not really what I had in
mind, Henry.” Basically he needs my difference to die in a
crash, or be ritually amputated in a civil war. Then he
shows me a prize-winning poem (one of his own in fact)
about a set of twins whose difference were swapped at
birth by a childless midwife, and who grew up with the
wrong differences, one in the bosom of the Saudi Royal
Family and the other beneath the “jackboot of poverty,” and
who met in later life only to discover that their differences
were exactly the same. He wants me to lock my difference
in a coal cellar until it comes of age then take it outside and
reverse over with a ride-on mower, thus making my
difference very different indeed, or auction my difference in
the global marketplace, or film it getting a “happy slapping”
in a busy street, or scream the details of my difference into
the rabbit hole of the cosmos hoping to bend the ear of
creation itself. I tell him I once swallowed my difference
without water on an empty stomach, but he isn’t listening
any more. He’s quoting some chap who went at his
difference with a pair of pinking shear. He’s talking about
such and such a poet who threw his difference in front of
the royal train, or had it beaten from him by plain-clothed
officers and rendered down into potting compost or
wallpaper paste, or set fire to his different on primetime
national TV. And when I plead with him that no matter
how small and pitiful my difference might seem to him, to
me it makes all the different in the world, he looks at me
with an expression of complete and undisguised and
irreversible indifference.

William Wegman, Twins with Differences, 1970

 

WW on photographer Madeleine de Sinety

 

 

    William Wegman was in Portland last week talking about friend and artist Madeleine de Sinety. He is interviewed about her in the above video.

Blue Monday

In 1988 WW, along with artist Robert Breer, created a music video for New Order's song "Blue Monday". 

 

  

 

In 2008, WW created this photograph, entitled Blue Monday, Wednesday, Friday.