The Thousands

Lauren Bamford didn’t grow up with dogs, but she is a dog lover. Though she did have “boring pets like fish and birds‚” as a kid, they’re not really the same, are they? Only a dog can fill that role: court-jester, hi-jinks instigator and sympathetic ear rolled into one cuddly, hair-moulting package.

Lauren’s new exhibition of photographs Neither Excluded Nor Included is a collection of dog portraits captured on the fly by her trusty 35mm analogue SLR. The images have the same golden-tinged, cannily composed quality of all Lauren’s work, like her photos of Tasmanian roadside stalls I Hope You Choke (exhibited at c3 earlier this year), or her saliva-inducing pictorials for Trotski and Ash.

The dogs are invariably happy characters, sitting in the back of a ute or chilling in the sun, on their way somewhere. She took the title from a book on dog psychology she found in the library, resonating with her as all these dogs are “included in the outing but not in the point of the outing.” It’s pretty inspiring how excited a dog gets at the mere mention of a walk. They’re just stoked to be included.