Dogs Chasing John Divola's Car in the Desert
A short photo edition of Art Dogs
Greetings Art Dogs,
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I would begin to experiment with what shorter, more visual posts might look like. Today is an attempt at such a post.
I hope you enjoy, and please let me know what you think?
xo
Bailey
Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert by John Divola
From 1995 to 1998, John Divola wandered the high desert of Southern California, including the east end of the Morongo Valley Basin, Wonder Valley, and the town of 29 Palms, searching for what he called “Isolated Houses” to photograph.
“The desert is not empty. However, it is vacant enough to bestow a certain weight to whatever is present. Add this to a heightened awareness of your own presence and the desert can take on an existential quality.” - John Divola
While traversing the desert searching for these homes, dogs would frequently chase his car, running at an all-out clip across the flat, arid terrain. John’s portraits of these dogs in motion turned into a series that he titled Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert.
John Divola on his process: “When I saw a dog coming toward the car I would pre-focus the camera and set the exposure. With one hand on the steering wheel, I would hold the camera out the window and expose anywhere from a few frames to a complete roll of film.”
John Divola on the series’ themes: “Contemplating a dog chasing a car invites any number of metaphors and juxtapositions: culture and nature, the domestic and the wild, love and hate, joy and fear, the heroic and the idiotic. Here we have two vectors and velocities, that of a dog and that of a car and, seeing that a camera will never capture reality and that a dog will never catch a car, evidence of devotion to a hopeless enterprise.”
John Divola grew up in the San Fernando Valley, and his photographs convey his deep connection to Southern California. As a multi-generation Californian, I love how he unearths the many sides of my home state—the dark and the transcendent, the mundane and the absurd. His photographs offer a more sincere picture of California, much like Joan Didion’s writing.
I want to show you two other series he made in California. Much like his dogs in the desert, these photographs document “devotion to a hopeless enterprise,” but this time the devotees are human beings.
The first series captures a ritual that John Divola identified in the 1970s: people standing in front of their homes in the San Fernando Valley watering their sidewalks and lawns. (Yes, sidewalks!)
The second series has a spectacular title: As Far as I Could Get.
To make these images, John Divola would push a self-timer button on his camera and “run as fast as I could away from the camera.” An exposure was made in 10 seconds.
John Divola created these photos of himself running across California’s landscapes at the same time as his Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert series. I suspect the dogs’ exuberance may have inspired him.
I hope that John Divola revisits this series as an older man. Let’s see how far the old dog can get.
Until next time, Bailey
Art Dogs is a weekly dispatch introducing the pets—dogs, yes!, but also cats, lizards, marmosets, and more—that were kept by our favorite artists. Subscribe to receive these weekly posts to your email inbox.
“devotion to a hopeless enterprise.”
❤️🙏🐕🐕
Those images are amazing--even without words they tell a story!