Four

Into the light

BY Four, January 17, 2012

The XVIIth Century Dutch and Flemish painters surely knew how to play with chiaroscuro. By moulding light, they succeed in transforming pretty much anything, including the portraits of bleak-looking aristocrats and wealthy folk, into representations of virtue, temperance, grandiosity.

Already fascinated by this use of light, when photographer Nicolas Wilmouth set to photograph a series of dog portraits, simply named Dogs, he saw the perfect opportunity to explore the Masters’ legacy. “The idea was to take portraits of dogs, similar to those portraits of upper class citizens of that period. I wanted to  initiate a dialog with the animal, through his expressions of worry, pride, melancholia…” Wilmouth explains.

Regardless of the breed, age or background, the series portrays all dogs as stoic and dignified beings, poised, wise-looking, against the all-engulfing dark background. Behind the scenes things were not always as smooth. “The dogs had various reactions, but most of them weren’t very comfortable to start with. In order to calm the dogs, their owner stayed close to them. They sometimes had to walk them a little in order to relax them and make them pose more naturally, especially the younger dogs. There was also the smell of other dogs on the cloth and that made some of them nervous” the photographer adds.

The photoshoot lasted around three months and the images were exhibited at the Van Kranendonk Gallery (Den Haag) and at the Paris Photo fair. The project went on to inspire Wilmouth to take photos of animals in old Parisian zoos for the series Le singe, la girafe et l’ibis rouge; and at a later stage, to create Cabinet de curiosités, a collection of images of stuffed animals, currently shown at the Elbeuf Museum.

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Photography by Nicolas Wilmouth
See the complete Dogs series and more of Nicolas’ work here

Tags Art, Collection, Exhibition, Nicolas Wilmouth, Painting, Photography, Portrait