THE LONG WAIT

Art&Culture, Photography, Publications

In his third and final instalment of The Waiting Game, artist Txema Salvans photographs dogs tied to lives of waiting.

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THE LONG WAIT

WORDS BY Olivia Finlayson

Challenge yourself to sit and watch the world go by. To wait, doing nothing, for an undetermined length of time. To weather the storm of boredom without opening Instagram to scratch your ‘entertain me’ itch. These days, it’s hard to do. We have limitless distractions at our disposal. Waiting is something we actively try to avoid. Yet it’s something we’re always doing—waiting for something to happen. For something new. For something else.

In his three-part series The Waiting Game, photographer Txema Salvans captures powerful scenes of waiting in solitude. “Protagonists are situated in an anti-climax that invokes a slow and anguished becoming,” he tells. Part I, shot over six years along Spain’s Mediterranean coastline, features lonesome prostitutes on the roadside, depicting “life in the gaps and at the edges.” In Part II, Salvans’ subjects are smatterings of people fishing by the water’s edge.

With its focus on guard dogs, Part III examines the relationship between humans and nature. Salvans: “It’s another of the kinds of waiting that struck me the most. All those thousands of dogs living their whole lives on a chain or confined to a small plot with no other possibility than to guard their masters’ property. It’s the most constant and the most hopeless waiting.”

Consigned to wait, protect and submit to isolation for the duration of their lives, the dogs of The Waiting Game III dwell endlessly in industrial estates, junkyards, farms and remote properties. Tethered to fences, walls and kennels with no reprieve, these “bored and emotionally abandoned dogs… nevertheless obediently carry out the task that has been imposed on them.”

The Waiting Game III is exhibiting at The Museum University of Navarra until 5th March 2023. The series can also be purchased as a coffee table book via the photographer’s website. Published by Editorial RM.

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All images courtesy of Txema Salvans
txemasalvans.com

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