The Getty Museum has acquired three prints by South African photographer Daniel Naudé, known for monumental images of animals. The acquisitions depict Africa’s feral dogs, quicksilver-fast and paparazzi-shy, in luminous landscapes.
“People sometimes ask me if I used Photoshop, or if the dog is stuffed,” Naudé told The Guardianin 2013, speaking of a related photo in the Africanis series. “There are specific things about the composition I wanted to achieve: seeing both of the dog’s eyes, and keeping the horizon lower than the dog’s body so he cuts through the landscape. I was influenced by Richard Avedon’s In the American West series–while his portraits of people are taken against a white backdrop, the way they look and the clothes they wear manage to say something about where they come from. With the dogs I shot, the landscape is their clothes…”