Katy White 'After the Race'

Yesterday was our first guest lecture of the year, lead by our very own lecturer Katy White, presenting her work in progress from her MA; a body of work that explores the anthropocentric gaze and the animal as 'other'.

Katy had a background of working with animals, working at Battersea dogs home, and chose to focus her 3rd phase of her MA on greyhounds; hated the idea of these dogs retiring so early, as young as 3, and them just being discarded and forgotten about once they had 'served their purpose'.

Her extensive research saw her looking into the colonial achieves of the anthropological images of indigenous people, which were used to take comparative measurements, for example stood next to a metre ruler. These images objectified the people, which is the effect Katy wanted when photographing the grey hounds; the lamprey grid in the background of her images which she made herself after some experimentation. 
The colonial achieve used wet plate photography as a method to document; it was a rising technology in those times. Very identifiable, Katy was unsure weather to adopt this method as she didn't want it to hide the true concept of her work. However, she followed her gut and used the wet plate process on tin, as a means to document her images. 

Katy's strong code of ethics meant that the animals wellbeing, to her, was far more important than achieving 'the shot'. She shot in natural light, without flash so they dogs wouldn't be spooked, and if the dog she was shooting had never worn a muzzle, Katy wouldn't force it to wear one, however if the dog was used to a muzzle, they would wear one. 
To present her work, Katy chose to use typologies; grids of multiple photographs together. Rather than increase the size of her tiny tin types she kept the original size and chose not to put them behind glass, but have them exposed, unframed. By doing this, when displayed in an exhibition, the viewer would have to come closer to examine each image individually, as well as standing far to look at the work as a piece together. In a grid of around 25 images two of the dogs weren't as uniformed as the others; they  were looking at the camera. This broke up the uniformity of the typology making it less monotonous and more striking and thought provoking, or reflective as Katy's aim was.

What shocked me about Katy's work is the sheer amount of research which she conducted, and how every aspect  of her work had a reason and thought behind it. At the beginning of the lecture she had the image of the greyhound with a muzzle on, and asked if we had any thoughts about it looking at it as an outsider with no background info. Then at the end she again presented the same photograph and asked how we felt about it after knowing a little more. I personally didn't feel any different about the image alone, I was impressed at first glance, but I was able to understand the meaning behind it and maybe appreciate it a little better.