Chris Jennings ARPS - A Day At The Dogs - DPOTY 2019 Shortlist

Chris Jennings ARPS - 'A Day At The Dogs' - DPOTY 2019 Shortlist

RPS Documentary Photographer of the Year 2019

On Wednesday afternoons a small crowd of enthusiasts gather in the stand of the Brighton and Hove Greyhound Racing Track. They are mostly ladies of a certain age, enjoying a lunch of sausages or gammon and chips, then a cup of tea. They have modest flutters and watch the dogs through big windows. A few more serious betters sit in the stand below and queue at the cashier’s window.

Chris Jennings ARPS

Chris Jennings ARPS

Chris Jennings ARPS

Chris Jennings ARPS

Chris Jennings ARPS

Chris Jennings ARPS

Although I am usually working on several long-term projects, this was executed on the spur of the moment in a single day. I had no particular photographic motivation beyond looking for possible subjects and themes.

Concentrating on documenting what I saw, I tried to take different viewpoints: the dogs and their handlers; the gamblers and the bookies; the ladies in groups who have come for lunch and an afternoon flutter. I envisaged a set of seven or so, visually interesting documentary images. I now see how it could form part of a larger social documentary project, perhaps about midweek leisure pursuits, gambling and animals, or disappearing track sports. Perhaps I will develop one of these in the new year.

The actual shooting is always challenging, but it is also the most stimulating part of a project; giving me a buzz out of interacting with the people I photograph. Encounters are often fleeting, but I must show a subject’s particularity somehow; I want to see and portray something insightful.

I am not sure that I undertake projects, it is more that they overtake me (or take me over). They begin as an accidental set of images on a theme that interests me. At first, I don’t have an angle, or even a purpose, but then one day I discover that I am developing a coherent set of images that do have something worth showing. Then I go into my project mode, channelling insights from single images into a clear intention, and shooting accordingly. I am a bit uneasy with categories; photography people whose opinions I trust have variously described me as: a street photographer; a portrait photographer; a street (or environmental) portrait photographer; a documentary photographer. I call myself a ‘people photographer’.

My most successful projects have been of elderly Aymara Indians in Bolivia; markets and the people of markets; the scavengers that live on the rubbish dumps on Central America. The last two have been shown in The Decisive Moment. I am not a professional photographer, though I have had photographs published in specialist journals, including those of international development banks. I have had my photographs accepted for group exhibitions and had my own exhibition which showed in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and a venue just outside Washington DC, USA.