Spain Week: Bego Antón : Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha

Spain Week: Bego Antón : Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha by Cristina FontsareApril 21, 2020

©Bego Anton, Carrie & Lyric, Salem, Connecticut from Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha

The gaze of Bego Antón is focused towards the less conventional spheres of reality. She is drawn to the extraordinary and to those small groups of people who are curious to the rest of society for their minority beliefs or practices.

The trigger of her work are themes, characters or communities that can be eccentric for some, since she shows us another side of reality. Despite the sense of humor that the viewer can project in some of her works, she shows great respect for the themes and characters she portrays and establishes a close relationship of complicity.

In her projects she immerses herself in the idiosyncrasy of the place, the culture and beliefs of its characters, whether in the United States, in the Basque Country or in her latest work made in Iceland.

As she points ”My work always revolves in what I call a love triangle composed of nature, humans and animals,” “I am very interested in how we relate to our natural environment and how this affects our daily lives”

©Bego Anton, Evelyn & Cowboy, Wardensville, West Virginia from Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha

Bego Antón is a Spanish photographer born in Bilbao (1983). She studied journalism in the Basque Country and after a year in England with and Erasmus grant she decided to specialized in documentary photography in Barcelona, where she is based. Her photographic work usually explores the contradictory relationships humans have with nature and animals. She also shows particular interest in extraordinary and small groups of people to disembowel concepts such as truth, reality or fantasy.

Her work has been widely published in Lens Blog New York Times,National Geographic, Esquiere, Le Monde, CNN Photos, The British Journal of Photography, GUP, IMA among others. She has exhibited around the world in cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, London, Washington DC, New York, Saligao, Hannover or Verzaska. She was Revelation Prize PhotoEspaña 2017 and was chosen as a participant in the Joop Swart Masterclass of World Press Photo 2014.

©Bego Anton, Kath & Maisy, Boyce, Virginia from Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha

Everbody Loves to ChaChaCha

United States, January-March 2015

This is the story of women and men who dance with their dogs; and of dogs who dance with their humans.

Musical Canine Freestyle is a choreographed performance in which a dog and a human move to music together. They choose a song they both like and a costume that matches the lyrics. They dance in unison, as dancing partners. They weave, jump, bow, spin, roll, walk
backwards, forward or move diagonally. And sometimes, the bond between them is so strong that they enter what they call the pink bubble, that dimension where they become one being and the rest of the world disappears.

Travelling through several states in the US, from New York to Arizona, I met women who dance with their dogs. I visited with them in their homes to portrait these teams in their dancing costumes and captured their choreographies and personal stories on film.

Everybody Loves To ChaChaCha is a combination of medium format portraits and still lives with a short documentary.