Wegman has become famous for his"Fashion Photographs" of his Weimeraner dogs. It all began sometime in the late 1960s or ''70s (the biography is not clear on this) when he made videos and took photographs of his first Weimeraner, Man Ray. Of course, the dog's name suggests instant images of that great experimenter in early photography, Man Ray (1890-1976), whose association with Dadaism and other 20th century art forms has made him renowned around the world.

Man Ray, the dog, was spared being dressed up and turned into some kind of anthropomorphic creature. The dressed-up dog period did not start until Wegman acquired Fay Ray, his second Weimeraner. He writes: "Perhaps it was her femininity. We came to the mutual realization that she had a desire to be observed."

Most of the slides shown on this site do not do justice to his photographs, so one apologizes in advance. The originals displayed at the AGO are taken with a poster-size Polaroid camera that resembles those huge, early box cameras from the era when the 19th century turned into the 20th. Working these monster Polaroids in itself takes considerable skill. But, what makes his shots so special is the manner in which Wegman has adorned his dogs (there are now several as Fay Ray has produced pups) and the background in front of which he has placed them.

There were no slides available of  my favourite series of pictures called "Night Shade". It consists of three photos of a dog wearing a lacey hat in front of an apparent night sky. Each photo is a little different from the other. The third one includes a red flower growing out of the dusky blue sky, challenging the apparent evening quietude. There is something painterly about these photos that makes them so appealing. The play of light and colour and the transparent laciness of the round hat dominate in these photos, while the dog is just an adjunct despite being the wearer of the hat. In other photographs, the dog's presence is far more dominant.

In most of the pictures, the dogs remind one, sadly, of the dressed-up pooches in cheap circus shows in which they are made to perform unnatural acts such as walking on their hind legs and turn pirouettes. Yet, one knows that Wegman is not putting his dogs through hoops, so to speak. They are quite willing models, dressed up with wigs, or high spike-heeled shoes, or standing behind dressed-up mannequins, their heads peeking out above the clothing. These pictures are a play on our own vanities. Each one can be seen in a different way. The choice is the viewer's.

What causes one to think as one looks at these dolled-up dogs is that they are being used in a manner totally contradictory to their origin and nature. Theirs is a fairly new breed of dog that was first produced in Weimar, Germany in the 19th century. They were bred as hunting dogs for big game: bears, wolf, deer and boar, and as these declined, they were used as birding dogs. They are one of the fastest runners in the dog family, achieving speeds as fast as 38 miles per hour (61 km pH).There is a contradiction, or perhaps even some lampooning in the title of the exhibit. Although called Wegman: Fashion Photographs, the artist admitted at the opening of the show that he knows nothing about fashion. He finds himself frequently invited to talk shows, where he is expected to discuss fashion, only to have to admit his ignorance on the subject. It cannot be denied that many people, to whom he is unknown, may simply be drawn to the exhibit because they expect to see fashion photographs.

One of the most satirical photos in the show, and one of the saddest for this writer, is the one shown below here, called "Bikini, 1999". It instantly brought to mind the spectacle on a beach in Malta, in which a thin, emaciated woman looking not unlike the dog in the picture, showed herself off in a bikini. She obviously did not realize that one wanted to immediately recoil from the sight she produced, all chic, but no substance, all vanity, but no sex appeal, all self-delusion.

The Wegman show consists, of course, of more than  the Fashion Photographs. There are the unorthodox videos that are, to be honest, at times very boring; yet, undeniably, they have a life of their own in this show. For some people they may well be the main attraction, because they will create double-takes in the mind, they will sometimes cause momentary disorientation. But, like so much of this type of video presentation, it borders on the self-absorbed. The dog vignettes are cute, at best, but leave no lasting impression. When these videos were conceived, they created considerable attention because they were shot in a then very new medium. They are now seen as classics of their genre. But not all things that are called classic are necessarily of importance, or of artistic value.

Then there are these droll little pencil drawings and watercolors that occupy one gallery room. What to make of them? They are spoofs, doodles, child-like dashes, but are they worth a  gallery space? Taking postcards and then expanding on their view through watercolour images is not new. Do they merit an exhibition?

For this reviewer, the photographs are what makes this exhibit. All the other things may show that Wegman has more up his sleeve than dressed up dogs, but there was not enough to see of this non-photographic side to tell one he can be called a serious artist in the other media.

William Wegman: Fashion Photographs runs at the AGO to July 28.

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Sometime ago the Art Gallery of Ontario had an exhibition of photographs by the renowned French photographer, Eugène Atget, who made it his life's work to photograph Paris from every possible angle. Not all of the photos can be called great art works, but many are. Regardless, though, of their artistic merit, the photos depict some aspect of Paris that is clearly identifiably of that city, even if it is only a metal railing inside a building, a door to a shop, or the abutment of a bridge.

If I recall correctly, none of the photos in that AGO exhibit, called Paris Itineraries, contained people, which was one of my complaints about the show. I had seen some of Atget's work in which he had focused his lens not just on the streets but the various street people and artisans that constituted Paris around the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These photos were far more lively than the often static shots of the city streets and buildings. But, that was just my own preference, wanting to see human or animal existence within the city.

At present, the Goethe Institut Inter Nationes on Toronto's King Street juxtaposes the photographs of two young photographers to give us a view of Berlin and Toronto. The photos of the latter city are the work of Berliner, Gosbert Adler, and of the former are by Torontonian, Robin Collyer.

The Canadian shoots in colour while the German chooses black and white photography as his medium. Despite the colour contrast, the resulting photographs share the same mental  and conceptual attitude. They focus on the seamy side of the cities they recorded in their  photographs. Here it must be pointed out that neither photographer apparently knew the assigned city prior to the assignment.

Collyer's photographs, because of the use of colour, appear to be more lively than those of his German colleague's work. That is, however, very misleading. Once one eliminates the colours from the scenes he chose, they are as abjectly forlorn and bitter, as those chosen by Adler.

Neither made any attempt to find any identifying or redeeming features within the two cities. One does not know if the two communicated prior to taking up their assignments, but they would appear to have colluded to make the two cities seem empty, run-down, depopulated places in which no one would want to live.

In an art photo show about cities one does not expect pictures suited for tourism pamphlets, but one does want to see something of the heart of a city, something that tells us that lives are lived there. In this exhibition one cannot help but feel that the photographers take a viewpoint that is abjectly negative and anti-humanity. Even Atget at his most sterile chose views that implied that life and art intermingled in his city.  

Adler went out of his way to make Toronto appear a wasteland, filled with cracked pavements, run-down sheds in back alleys, a place filled with parking lots but no houses, a place of barren strip malls without any redeeming features.

Collyer entered Berlin's newer housing projects in which contrasting colours of the buildings differentiate the monotony of the identical structures. He chose empty subway platforms, empty hallways, decaying extra-urban structures. Like Adler's lens, his view picked up the cracks in the pavements and the empty spaces that lie in-between buildings.

There is no soul in either of the photographers' works. One is saddened that these two artists have such a need to find the ugly sides, the unredeeming sides of life. Perhaps this is because neither has really experienced what a true wasteland is all about. Perhaps they should seek an assignment in a place like Jenin.