Tailshots photo collection

Most people in Anglo-Euro-American regions know dogs only as pets or working animals or as under some kind of human ownership. Dogs outside of human property regimes tend to be seen as ‘stray’ and as needing either ‘rescue’ or ‘control’. ROH Indies runs against the grain of this conceptualisation of dogs, and engages with street dogs as autonomous, free-living animals. Our first task, then, was to find ways of making visible these other canine possibilities – of showing what the lives of these nonhuman co-residents of human settlements might look like.

We commissioned Chennai-based photographer, Eshita Prasanna, to help us with this. The images in this collection portray some of the city’s free-living dogs, and the ways in which they come into interaction with their human cohabitants.

All photographs © Eshita Prasanna/Tailshots