Object number2023.37.2
D05F23
Portfolio/SeriesDogs Chasing My Car in the Desert
Date1996-1998
Artist
John Divola
(American, born 1949)
CultureAmerican
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 15 1/4 x 22 3/4 in. (38.7 x 57.8 cm)
Sheet: 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm)
Sheet: 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm)
Credit LinePurchase, Advisory Council for Photography
On View
Not on viewPeriod21st c
Classification(s)
Vassar Exhibitions
Label TextJohn Divola mounted a motorized camera to his car and drove through the Southern California desert, recording dogs as they gave chase. Working at 1/1000 of a second, he captured animals mid-lunge: blurred, distorted, and supernatural. These photographs embody what he considers “an imprint, remnant, of an activity,” documenting unstable durations where artist, animal, and apparatus intersect. Born in Venice, California, Divola has spent four decades photographing the changing landscapes of Southern California. His practice treats the region as an active workspace—chance encounters become photographic opportunities, and the camera becomes an embedded participant in the action. Some dogs barked and swerved, others abandoned the chase entirely. Divola frames this pursuit as both elemental and absurd: “It could be viewed as a visceral and kinetic dance. 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.”
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