Royal College of Art Genesis Scholar, Greta Alfaro, photographs John Studzinski's dogs

Greta Alfaro, the first beneficiary of the new Genesis Foundation Scholarship programme at the Royal College of Art, has produced a series of portraits featuring dogs belonging to Genesis Foundation founder, John Studzinski.  Greta writes:

I have taken photographs of the dogs, making them look like landscapes by using miniatures, coloured backgrounds and situating the camera in the right angle.

Photography in itself is one of the frequent subjects of my work. I am interested in the role it plays in our life, in how we perceive it, how it has modified our behaviour and how it is used with different interests by the media and the publicity as well as in amateur photography.

In this series, I reflect about the verisimilitude of the photographic image, about the capacity inherent to it to make believable what it presents to us.  In that sense, these images work as trompe l'oeils.

I would like to connect photography with the tradition of figurative painting, and at the same time, try to find a relation between the traditional genres of painting and the contemporary world.  In a game of resemblances, these images are at the same time landscapes, portraits and still lives.

But the subject of the portrait is not easily identifiable and the landscape is a fake one.  Finally, these photographs are still lives, where we doubt if the hair belongs to an animal that is alive or to a dead one.  The dog is alive, as we are, but its quietness invades us with the certitude of the brevity of life.

Greta Alfaro. Isolde, 2009. Courtesy of John Studzinksi

Greta Alfaro. Moses, 2009. Courtesy of John Studzinksi

Greta Alfaro. Zenia, 2009. Courtesy of John Studzinksi

To view another recent work by Greta entitled In Ictu Oculi, please head to our Media section.