Shelter Dogs
Where the Wild Dogs
In art, suffering has a long tradition, especially when caused by human or divine wrath. In today's visual society, many of us are used to seeing images of violence and disaster, perhaps even indifferent to the suffering we are exposed to.
Susan Sontag writes in her book Regarding the Pain of Others about humanity's relationship with suffering, focusing on photography. Photography’s ability to bear witness of suffering while simultaneously captivating with beauty sends conflicting signals. In my project, I was struck by these opposing feelings: stunningly beautiful landscapes framed by a daily struggle for survival.
In January 2024, I travelled to Thailand and Cambodia with support from the Wikander Family Foundation. I volunteered to help out at the shelter and photographed dogs at Dog Rescue Thailand in Mae Phim, Rayong. The shelter houses around three hundred dogs, in addition to the approximately three hundred dogs they feed and care for in the surrounding area every day.
I saw the pain of the abandoned, the hunger in their eyes. I saw those who had been fed poisoned food, had an arrow shot through their head, boiling oil thrown over them, or had machete wounds across their necks. Dogs perish in traffic accidents and are left by the roadside. Others are taken from the street and sold as food.
Every afternoon, we loaded the sareng, a kind of motorcycle or scooter modified with a sidecar or a cargo platform, with dog food mixed with rice. We drove away from the promenade and into the countryside—open wastelands alongside tangled forests. The colours, shapes, and light created magical landscapes. Then the magic broke as their movements revealed their otherwise camouflaged bodies. Mothers with swollen teats, and puppies who had just learned to walk. Big and small. Few old but many young. Some came running, others looked from a distance until we drove away. All skinny.
Rayong is the largest production area for silica sand in Thailand, with an annual production of about 400,000 tons. A temporary production shutdown due to tourism development has caused the large dunes that decorate the countryside to be inhabited by wild dogs. They dig caves that provide shelter from both heat and monsoon rains. Sometimes they collapse over the dogs, leading to a painful death.
My project revolves around life and death, power and politics, and value and exclusion.
We are quite similar, the dog and the human. Thousands of years ago, we lived side by side, hunted the same prey, and ate each other's leftovers. We are social creatures who live in packs. We liked you so much that we brought you into our homes, and you became our best friend. The wolf that the dog once was has, over hundreds of thousands of years, been slowly domesticated and adapted to human needs. A process that is both biological and cultural.
The natural course has been disrupted as many of the dog’s needs are adapted by and for humans. Humans have thus transformed the criteria for natural selection into cultural criteria and reshaped the wolf into a dog. Today’s dog is not a wild predator.
Humans thrive in order but create chaos.
In nature, we discipline and tame. Desperately, we try to control the number of animals and confine them to chosen places. Some far away and others nearby. The dangerous animals are most beautiful behind glass or on our bodies. Sometimes nature seduces us. We can't get enough and want more and more. We collect and bond until we lose control.
But places change, and so do people. Large housing complexes replace small houses, and the animals are forced to move out onto the street.
In Thailand, the general attitude towards dogs is friendly, unlike in other countries where the dog is considered the lowest creature. In Buddhism, one must not harm or kill a living being, and it is believed to bring good karma to release animals, often without regard for the consequences for the animal or its surroundings.
My journey to Thailand and Cambodia made me reflect on life and death, responsibility, exclusion, and social hierarchies. Witness Dog Rescue Thailand’s tireless work in creating a better environment for the enormous number of stray dogs gave me perspective and hope. In their daily work with dumped, emaciated, sick, and injured dogs, they manage to see and give love, food, and care to these souls.
/Malin